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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

#621

Post by leptons »

einpoklum wrote: post #605
wltr wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a bit puzzled by Firebird (I thought that’s a fork of Thunderbird, like, say, LibreWolf or Waterfox), but I couldn’t quickly find the project, so my assumption is that it’s just the misprint, and author thinking of Fire-fox -> Fire-bird, not being into ecosystem for too long to remember the actual bird. Anyway, that’s irrelevant to the point author’s making, and I’m happy there’s a new Linux adopter now. Thanks…

Maybe it's supposed to be BetterBird [1], a Thunderbird tracking fork whose logo is a red phoenix rather than a blue bird? [1] : https://betterbird.eu/

I misremembered the name, it's Thunderbird. But thanks for your comment, I did not know about Betterbird, but I will give it a try!

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#622

Post by rasmus-kirk »

jama211 wrote: post #419
ivanjermakov wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except ProtonDB website reports that completely blocked games make up 3% of the top 1000 Steam games. Meanwhile, 84% is perfectly playable (some with minor tweaks). https://www.protondb.com/

So you’re still rolling a 6 sided dice every time you try a new game as to whether it works at all, and half the time you need to tweak it still? That’s a reasonably large barrier to entry then. I have arch Linux but I still boot into windows to play games that are supposed to be supported because I got sick of playing through 20 min or so of a game for it to crash in a specific spot and I’d have to start over in win…

I buy games for my steam deck, only stopping to read up if they're "unsupported". Surprisingly, they seem to often STILL work in that case, this happened with Ghosts of Tsushima, which was unsupported because their online play didn't work (good riddance lol).

Never had an issue with any game running through proton. Only issue was Stardew Valley that couldn't play online. Turns out the Linux version (was default) had an unfixed bug, and choosing the Windows version with proton "Just Worked". Hilariously, "Win32 is the most stable Linux ABI"...

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#623

Post by rasmus-kirk »

xena wrote: post #33
nialv7 wrote: post #31

Actually surprised that Xe wasn't already a Linux user.

Have been for a while, had Windows for games, but now Fedora runs them well enough I don't have to care.

I thought you used NixOS? Is it just your gaming system that's Fedora? Do you still use Nix?

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#624

Post by amenod »

the__alchemist wrote: post #537
amenod wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that I don't have my own set of gripes about linux, but this wishlist is weird, at least to me: - There is nothing wrong with sudo - or to be precise, it is good thing that administrative operations are explicit. And sudo is still less annoying than Windows "admin prompt" anyway. - Why do you care? Use apt install, yum install or apk add, whatever your distro supports. - It is not required, there are GUI man…

I think I can summarize this: In life and devices, I often find processes I find are high-friction, or have room for user interface or other improvements. There is a guarantee that there will be people who will tell me these concerns are invalid. In the case of Linux usability desires, I will make the cautious conclusion that there is a group of people who consider Linux part of their identity, and any desire for imp…

Sure. Or we could say that when someone is used to the way things work, one is reluctant to change and will find all kinds of "faults" to keep them from taking the plunge.

As I said, I have my own list of things with linux I would like to see different, it's just that they are different. And they are not big enough to keep me in MS-land. But to each their (our) own, I guess.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#625

Post by hollandheese »

the__alchemist wrote: post #527

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 sudo, or at least no conflict between "Sudo is dangerous and can break your system" / "You need sudo to do routine things"

This is an unreasonable ask. No modern operating system will give you this. You have to escalate credentials on macOS and Windows as well. Typically Linux asks you LESS often than either macOS or Windows. This or I don't understand what you're asking here.

>- No CLI required to install software

Just use GNOME Software or Discover (KDE). They'll install anything on Flathub or in your distro's repositories. Use a different distro than Ubuntu though, since they are non-standard with using Snap instead of Flatpak.

>Lag-free pen experience

I have the same amount of lag in Windows as in Linux on my Surface Pro 9. What does need work is palm rejection, but you can disable the touchscreen while the pen is in use. Not the best.

>Good touch support

GNOME and GTK 3/4 apps are by far the best for this. Not quite as good as Windows though.

>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)

?????? ?????? If you mess with system files on any system without knowing what you're doing you'll run into this problem with an OS.

>Let me open an application by double-clicking it

Double clicking what?

The executable file in your file manager? That works.

A desktop shortcut? Use a different DE than GNOME or install an extension that allows desktop shortcuts.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#626

Post by jama211 »

rasmus-kirk wrote: post #622
jama211 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re still rolling a 6 sided dice every time you try a new game as to whether it works at all, and half the time you need to tweak it still? That’s a reasonably large barrier to entry then. I have arch Linux but I still boot into windows to play games that are supposed to be supported because I got sick of playing through 20 min or so of a game for it to crash in a specific spot and I’d have to start over in win…

I buy games for my steam deck, only stopping to read up if they're "unsupported". Surprisingly, they seem to often STILL work in that case, this happened with Ghosts of Tsushima, which was unsupported because their online play didn't work (good riddance lol). Never had an issue with any game running through proton. Only issue was Stardew Valley that couldn't play online. Turns out the Linux version (was default) had…

Yeah I’m not surprised, the steam deck hardware was picked with the best compatibility in mind. I’m aware in my case I have non-ideal hardware for Linux, such as an nvidia card.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#628

Post by array_key_first »

FractalParadigm wrote: post #486
jorvi wrote: 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…

Oh, this was like the windows 11 before windows 11. I didn't realize Microsoft made the same mistake twice.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#629

Post by shmeeed »

layer8 wrote: post #211
newsoftheday wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most charts I've seen indicate Linux already passed 5% usage worldwide.

Not quite: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...

PSA: Statcounter data is garbage, please stop referring to them.

This data is based on their own tracking solution customers, which is only about 0.3-0.6% of all websites (none of the big ones) and therefore highly self-selected.

Note that "unknown" is basically the inverse curve to Windows and has risen from 6 to 16% within the last year. In India, "unknown" has 55% market share. They don't give any explanation for this absolute failure of analytics, which is telling me that they really don't care at all.

There's no way to know within this context what "unknown" really is, but what I can tell you for sure is that any statistic based on this kind of data is absolutely useless.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#630

Post by shmeeed »

shmeeed wrote: post #629
layer8 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...

PSA: Statcounter data is garbage, please stop referring to them. This data is based on their own tracking solution customers, which is only about 0.3-0.6% of all websites (none of the big ones) and therefore highly self-selected. Note that "unknown" is basically the inverse curve to Windows and has risen from 6 to 16% within the last year. In India, "unknown" has 55% market share . They don't give any explanation for…

Cloudflare is a better alternative: https://radar.cloudflare.com/explorer?dataSet=http&loc=&dt=5...
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