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Comment by spicybright | Hacker News Reader

Why another WM to further divide up dev time for desktop environments.

I'm not say people shouldn't make what they want, but I think they'd meet their goals a lot easier contributing to an existing project instead of forking.

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I'm still using unity because it was the last usable polished out of the box usable DE for me. I'm glad they try to do this, the linux desktop needs a contender to the too rich kde and too limited gnome, but with a modern touch.

It's a gnome extension.

Forks may also contribute upstream

That's the Linux desktop ecosystem. Another window manager that some users will use and will later complain that their browser isn't working with it or it crashes with etc Wayland, X11, Yet another Linux app or even Z shell, etc.

Sometimes it's only 'fun' swapping in alternatives of alternative system components, until you actually need to get work done. Then it must not get in the way of the user.

I prefer the desktop environment of 'It just works' and 'If it ain't broke don't fix it'. It's called macOS.

You are basically teabagging.

There is a lot of awesome people in the Free Desktop community, who work hard for what they believe in. Criticism is always welcome, there is a lot of work to do and a lot of stuff to improve.

But having people who use a different OS come in and ridicule all of that work is not really nice.

I've been happily using the treaded GNOME without filepicker thumbnails for 10 years now and I'm neither less productive not less happy than you.

Enjoy your Mac! OSX has a lot of great inspirations for the Free Desktop.

Not parent commenter but I've had the same experience - and I'm sure this comment will be received just as poorly as theirs, but I've given up on Linux desktop. It just isn't stable. I've tried so many times and I don't know what 1) is wrong with me or 2) the "I'm just as productive on Linux" people are smoking. Just getting basic stuff to work like bluetooth is a hassle. Headphones stuck in headset mode, let's go drop an argument to the bluetooth kernel module to enable autoswitching to A2DP. Touchpad driver for my machine kinda sucks, click and drag is still a little broken. Screen tearing watching YouTube videos on Firefox. Oh and it randomly freezes requiring a hard restart. Good luck upgrading packages, you never know what will randomly break. Extra good luck upgrading to the next LTS release, your machine might not boot when you go to restart.

I've been wanting to love Linux desktop for 10+ years and I just give up. I don't have time for this stuff anymore. And I'm not using esoteric distros. Ubuntu LTS, I also tried Fedora and it was even worse.

Sorry, but none of this happens to me on macOS or Windows. They're not perfect - of course crash, have certain quirks, etc, but they waste much less of my time on basic desktop functionality being unstable or needing special treatment.

That's ok. My experience is much better and I don't know why there is a difference either.

I just don't get why people love to dunk so hard on something they don't use and do it in such a disrespectful way. What you said is totally fine, altough I could argue that you thinking I smoke is an insult, I mean it was one time, come on, I didn't even inhale.

A lot of complaints sounds to be hardware specific, so there's really no cure for it than filing the bugs.

> Ubuntu LTS, I also tried Fedora and it was even worse.

The firmware for a lot of hardware has been lacking for years and sometimes can bug down after upgrades. And we shouldn't even speak about the proprietary buggy-man that terrorizes a lot of linux users trying to get their hardware to work, that is called NVidia. If you would have waited upgrading for a few weeks after a new release becomes available things are often fixed. You need to understand is that it's community effort and filing bugs is also very important.

Speaking as someone who's been using exclusively Linux for the last 5+ years I think it's dishonest of people to say any distro "just works" like MacOS and Windows. For technical users who are willing to invest the time to configure things as they like I feel it's an unparalleled experience, but it certainly takes some work to get there. Most of the issues you mentioned are ones I've personally encountered and fixed (sans the freezes, that's abnormal).

Paradoxically I had a much worse experience with things breaking themselves and not working when using the allegedly more accessible/stable Ubuntu (LTS) than I do now that I use Arch. The Frankenstein-esque mess of held back packages seems to do a better job preserving bugs in amber than preventing them. I would honestly hesitate to steer any technical individuals towards Ubuntu at this point, and I suspect it's given a lot of people a sour taste of desktop Linux.

(just to be clear- I'm absolutely not saying arch is the "just works" distro, just sharing my experience comparison)

Not in Big Sur it doesn’t. They dramatically changed the appearance for the worse. Tons more wasted space. They broke long-standing keyboard shortcuts.

The move to iOS-ify MacOS with Catalyst just doesn’t work. Messages on Big Sur is effectively non-functional. I have a chat with a friend that breaks the message entry box reliably. If he sends me a message I have to create a new message to him to get the input box. It’s janky crap.

Personally I’m excited by a hardware company selling a fully integrated Linux machine and taking an interest in making a working OS. This could finally get me free of Apple’s misguided antics.

> I prefer the desktop environment of 'It just works' and 'If it ain't broke don't fix it'. It's called macOS.

Pffft. No it's called XFCE. My Macs are broken way more often by updates and are way less compatible with my hardware than anything else in my house. They really don't just work... They're dead ass not even half as stable as Manjaro.

That's your preference. But I would certainly be fuming if the only option on Linux was, say, GNOME. The workflow doesn't agree with me and neither do some of their UI choices. Thankfully, the "Linux desktop ecosystem" has afforded me a number of options that I much enjoy using.

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