Enlighten me - what's the problem with the linux desktops?
DRI2 is an improvement over DRI, of course (which was already about five to eight years behind SOTA for GPUs when it came out), but it's still a rickety, insecure mess--for one, any application can fire messages at any window in the X environment and read input sent to any window, which has some obvious implications for the usefulness of containers on the desktop--that is sorely in need of replacement. This isn't to criticize X when it was developed, mind you--it was fine then. It should have been defenestrated by 2002.
Full disclosure: I get the feeling from your posts that you're looking to win an argument, rather than learn anything, so I'm not likely to respond to you further unless your tone changes. HTH. HAND.
For your disclosure - don't be too lofty with me - I'm trying to understand your problems because I've a very different experience.
This is mostly because X11 sucks. (It's also partly because the proprietary nvidia drivers sucks). Nowadays I reboot on windows to watch netflix or play games (even linux-compatible ones) because the experience is just much better. Linux has been constrained to work stuff.
Now wayland is coming (apparently. NVidia is still trying to pull some shit[0]) and should fix all that. That's great ! I tested wayland a few months ago though, and my GPU's proprietary drivers weren't supported. So still no games, still no movies. :(.
0: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-Wa...
For example, I tried watching TNG from my external drive the other day (Using the latest VLC for both). On Linux this isn't a problem, the quality is good and there's no stuttering. On Windows it was hellish: The quality was extremely poor and it froze every (literal) 10 seconds to grab more data from the disk.
https://www.acsac.org/2006/papers/epstein-paper.pdf
One from 2005 that I sent Joanna in gripe about Qubes not having a trusted path:
https://www.acsac.org/2005/papers/54.pdf
Good to see she added a better graphics system at some point. I suggest looking at prior work, though, as it's by security engineers with knowledge of adding it to every aspect of lifecycle and intent to minimize TCB. For example, GenodeOS is using Nitpicker + a microkernel. The abandoned EROS OS, whose site is still up, combined a different windowing system with a capability kernel and new networking stack. All to minimize risk in system in fine-grained way.
In other words, your browser can snoop on what passwords you type into an X terminal if it wanted to or is compromised.
(Of course, the Dockerfiles were also running apps--like, say, Chrome--as root, with no user namespaces, so it wasn't exactly great anyway.)
It's only bad advice if you're relying on Docker to provide security against targeted threats. Know your enemy.
But in Linux, I can run application in container or VM and then use VNC, RDP, or Spice to connect to it in secure manner.
No, it's not. OS X has GUI isolation, an application cannot read keystrokes or read other application's contents, unless you explicitly give permission to do so. This is the reason why applications that can do more, such as Alfred, require you to explicitly enable these rights in the Privacy section of the Security & Privacy prefpane.
Windows also has GUI isolation (UIPI), but it's a bit murkier. As far as I understand, lower-privileged applications cannot read events from higher-privileged applications.
So while it's possible for a program to listen to keyboard events for other non-administrative windows (such as the password for a browser), it isn't possible for a non-administrative window to grab keyboard input for stuff like windows password prompts, or information typed into administrative console windows, etc.
[0] - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3169675/how-to-use-setwin...
If you select your hardware, they work pretty flawlessly. Certainly right there with Windows or OSX or anything else. In a lot of cases you don't even need to be very selective, you just need to have a modern machine.
"If you select your hardware," you can definitely have a decent time. But I don't know many people for whom the operating system is more important than what you can do with it, and part of "what you can do with it" is "use your hardware."
Having had an issue with Ubuntu and nvidia in the past, you might want to google NOMODESET and setting it at boot, which should let you boot into X/Unity and get the latest drivers.
> But I don't know many people for whom the operating system is more important than what you can do with it, and part of "what you can do with it" is "use your hardware."
Absolutely. But if OSes aren't directly equivalent (and the hackability of a nix gives it more power than Windows can ever have), then it's worth sorting out those hardware issues (as frustrating as they are).
Thanks; I later ran into something that hinted at that. Frankly, though, at this point I don't care. I have something that works and will be patched until 2019. I don't care about my desktops. Every second I spend debugging something stupid on a desktop is a wasted second. This is bad for me and I resent it.
> and the hackability of a nix gives it more power than Windows can ever have
Ehh--if you have to use that "hackability" to get something that is minimally usable, that's kind of a push. (Or, when you consider OS X, a serious negative, because the only thing I have to do to get OS X to where I want is install Homebrew and a short list of packages, none of which require configuration.) I don't care about desktop environments or tiled window managers, the extent of my interaction with my WM, which I could not name, is a sort-of reimplementation of Aero Snap. Again, if I wanted to throw a bunch of time away on an operating system, I would set up a Hackintosh and actually be able to use Photoshop. Which, in keeping with the theme of "Linux desktops are a fractal of unusability", would be a significant improvement. I tried to avoid a reboot and use the GIMP yesterday for something. I think I need counseling now. I ended up using Pinta, whose layered image format ("OpenRaster", which wants to be a standard but it seems like nobody uses it?) is so bonkers and edge-case that ImageMagick doesn't even support it, to say nothing of Photoshop or even Paint.NET.
It turned out, kind of to my surprise, that Linux on the desktop offers very little to me as a Linux developer, sysadmin, and long-time entrails-reading "power user". That's pretty damning, in my book.
Another ocean boiled, courtesy of the Free Desktop Project.
And this isn't a "rant". I promise you, when I'm ranting, you will know.
As I understand it, installing macOS on non-Apple hardware is a license violation. Your employer is okay with that?
Maybe the fact that I have to give them time is one of the major problems? You know how much time I invested in getting my Windows and OSX desktops to work flawlessly? Zero.
Intel chipsets and their graphics drivers have excellent support out of the box. That goes for everything from refurbished Thinkpads to Chromebooks to used Macbook Pros to new desktops.
Network drivers are almost always missing. Looking at the device manager, about 5-10 different devices fails to auto-install, all part of the motherboards. The default graphic drivers tend to "start", but is limited in refresh rate and resolution, and moving around windows shows a noticeable stutter until I install some official drivers from the graphic card manufacturer. Sound normally works without issues.
On linux, the problems are almost the reverse. I have yet to have network problems on a fresh debian installation. Graphic is a all-or-nothing deal, which means either x-server starts up normally or it refuses to start completely. Sound is normally a pain, but looks to have better default behavior in the last 3 years or so.
What are you reinstalling, Windows XP every time?
Newer versions of Windows are getting better at finding and installing sane drivers for the hardware. It’s still not perfect, Windows Update doesn’t have all the latest drivers and OEMs ruin everything especially on laptops, but these days I install the latest Windows and everything usually just works.
But if you don't believe me, and choose to believe those reporting issues with Linux, just do a google search on windows install and network issues. There is plenty of people reporting the same issue. to cite windows own support page:
"If Windows can’t find a new driver for your network adapter, visit the PC manufacturer’s website and download the latest network adapter driver from there. If your PC can't connect to the Internet, you'll need to download a driver on a different PC and save it to a USB flash drive so you can install the driver on your PC"
A few months ago I bought a gaming laptop on release date. Guess what, network worked without issue. X-server did not start until proprietary drivers were installed. Sound worked.
Windows release schedule do not match Debian's release schedule. Each year after a release, the default drivers will get worse, but the general experience can still be obtained by people who experience the install process. The experience I have endured with windows is issue with new motherboards and especially network drivers (and built-in raid cards for the installer... good grief, that was a wasted afternoon trying to get the installer to accept the raid drivers). Second to that, the fall back graphic drivers look crappy and is bad in every way except that its slightly better than a basic command prompt.
I think a modern Ubuntu 16.04 Unity desktop for instance is actually a bit of a revelation for long time Linux users because it just works out of the box. I didn't have to install a single package or fiddle with anything for a change. It's fast, smooth, robust and works exceedingly well out of the box and wait for this it's even a delight to use.
It's another thing I am a long time Gnome user and won't even have tried Unity because of the now I think inexplicable bad press Unity has got but it's been quite a revelation. I urge those who have not tried it yet due to bad press to give it a shot and prepare to be suprised.
I compare it to my Windows machines and OSX laptops and do not feel a particular difference apart from preferences and of course once you get into specific use cases like adobe apps or gaming there is still ground to cover. But for a general productivity desktop with full acceleration I think it's there in many ways. If you need a rich ecosystem of dev tools it goes to the top. There is of course always scope for improvement architecturally and other things and I think that is happening with mir, wayland and Vulcan.
Upgrading these are hit and miss, and it's more common than not that third party drivers do not support newer versions of the operating system.
Linux, meanwhile, integrates all of these components. As long as you stay away from non-supported third party drivers it just works, and upgrades are painless. (Until some desktop developers change the GUI again, but that's another story.)
How are you supposed to run Adobe inDesign on a Linux desktop?
Or any other useful application, really.
Linux should just kill off its desktop. Mac OS X won the Unix desktop wars, and has the expected use models of a desktop, with a proper modern GUI API as well, instead of the ancient X hacks.
Mac OSX won the "desktop wars"? That's not even funny - it's one of the most awful DEs. You people have clearly no experience with any other OS besides the one from your favorite brand. "Hacker news"... more like "Noob Army News".
With wine...
> Or any other useful application, really.
You search in the software center or in your menu and start the app. Simple. FUD elsewhere, apple-noob.