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Comment by JeremyMorgan | Hacker News Reader

I am a minority when I say that I don't want the Linux desktop to flourish?

I've been using Linux since 1996. Though I also use Windows and OSX, I haven't been without a Linux machine for 20 years, and I've seen a lot.

It seems the more Linux distributions try to target the "average user" they just dumb it down and/or make it more proprietary. I can barely stand using Ubuntu these days for that reason.

I know, it's configurable, I can change anything I want but I don't really want to see that trend continue. I would like to see innovation focused on making Linux better for work, not focusing on the average Joe who doesn't want/need it.

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I'm with you. I think the best user experience for a home or work desktop is Windows. the best user experience for technical work is Linux. I want to use Windows and have a clean way to do my work in Linux from there. the new Linux subsytem in Windows seems like it might actually be possible.

until then I use osx which gets me ok user experience and pretty good work experience. it's a decent compromise

In what way does Windows offer a superior user experience than macOS? Certainly more games are available for Windows and that's a key feature for many. Are there any other advantages?

I've used both and I appreciate a few things macOS gets right - installing and uninstalling applications is copy and delete, which is simple. Most applications have a consistent look and feel.

> installing and uninstalling applications is copy and delete, which is simple

It's still black magic to most people.

As for user experience, I've never liked OSX, it never clicked with me. I find the menu bar at the top especially confusing, I run apps side by side a lot.

> installing and uninstalling applications is copy and delete

Half the time. The other half you get an installer.

The Mac OS just got the ability to resize windows by every edge or corner within the past decade. However, you still cannot disable an external monitor without physically turning it off or installing some third-party software to manage it for you. My point is that Windows has tons of similar features that the Mac OS simply does not have.

Beyond the features themselves, Windows has a superior UI. The global menu bar in the Mac OS is terrible. The dock is terrible. Window management is terrible. What's left? Oh, the finder. That's terrible too. These are things that everybody complains about over and over again so I offer you no reasoning here for my opinion. The only thing that Macs have going for them is that they are UNIX and you can build iOS apps with them. That's it. And that's why Macs have a 5% marketshare despite killer marketing.

Fortunately, Linux allows For multiple desktops, both dumbed down, sophisticated, and everything in between.

Unfortunately, the UI stuff is hard, and resources are limited, so Xfce will always be less polished than Unity. Frankly, I can live with that.

Yep, XFCE is great. It has its quirks and it's not as cool looking as the others but definitely lean and "good enough".

I left Unity years ago, and the whole Amazon adware thing pushed me away for good (though I have no idea if they're still doing that)

I installed Unity once and found it so unintuitive. I would've given it a chance, I think, but the Amazon adware thing was the final push for me as well.

Plenty of good Linux desktop environments to check out. Cinnamon, XFCE, Mate, or a tiling window manager solution are all really nice options and I have a hard time believing that detractors of the Linux desktop have tried all of those.

My daughter started to use an Xfce desktop when she was five. She knows her way around by now.

But the desktop, as an approach, is waning. The web browser is the new desktop, the new command line, and partly a new window manager. (Also, the new VM / OS to target.)

I do agree. I use Linux every day via ssh as headless servers and find it indispensable in that role. But I really have no interest in using a Linux distro in an end-user graphical desktop environment.

They don't always hit the mark, but at least OS X and Windows feel like they were at least looked over by someone with an interest in UI/UX. The various desktop environments for Linux always feel like they were designed by an engineer, and not in a good way.

I think the point is that there would be an idiot-proof distro and a more complicated distro, but both would be able to run the same software.

I'm with you. I want computers to be tools to enrich me, not act as a crutch. To flourish is to tear the heart out of what makes Linux great.

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