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Comment by aquir | Hacker News Reader

It's a shame the Linux is still "not there" to be a good replacement for Windows. I keep trying but having stupid issues all time, like my laptop is identified as a mobile device when connected to a Bluetooth multipoint headset so I can't connect to my phone and laptop in the same time :( Scaling is awful and unfortunately simply there are no good drivers for certain hardware.

Windows 11 is awful, I went back to 10 within a week - screen flickering, stupid scrolling issues etc.

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Drivers for certain hardware is still a huge issue. I have hardware that I just won’t attempt to install Linux on because devs don’t think exotic setups (like Intel integrated graphics AND an nvidia GPU) are worth supporting.

But everything else seems to be much improved lately. I’ve got Ubuntu running on my laptop and it works with my Magic Trackpad (including gestures), 4k display with fractional scaling, and 1080p low-dpi display simultaneously. I wasn’t sure they would ever get there. Everything pretty much works.

The App Store is still garbage and the whole Snap concept seems to work much worse overall than Flatpack. But I have faith they will get their act together eventually.

I don't know about Ubuntu but on Opensuse, Nvidia Optimus (Nvidia + integrated intel) works fine after installing the official Nvidia drivers and setting suse-prime to the desired mode.

I agree. Linux Desktop still has all the same basic usability problems it did in the 90s. In some ways it is even worse since it has massively overcomplicated a lot of its subsystems.

Still, I foresee a future where the pain of Linux Desktop for me will be outweighed by the pain of continuing to use Windows. Which is sad. Linux Desktop will have won not on its merits, but because Microsoft just decided it didn't want to make a Desktop OS anymore.

If I get extremely lucky, it's possible Haiku will take off in the meantime and implement some of the things I'm still waiting on for it to be a decent desktop for my uses, but I'm not holding my breath.

Yes, Haiku would be awesome! The UI is great, it's highly functional. We'll have the same problems re hardware :(

I would imagine surely there’s a distro that is just as functional as what you’re imagining Haiku will be one day right? The main issue I find with Linux is app support but that would be worse again with Haiku. What sort of usability issues would you expect to run into with something like Mint? Btw not saying Haiku isn’t cool, it absolutely is. But I see it being a long way behind even the Linux desktop.

> I would imagine surely there’s a distro that is just as functional as what you’re imagining Haiku will be one day right?

You can imagine it all you want, like most things that are pure fantasy.

> The main issue I find with Linux is app support but that would be worse again with Haiku.

There are other issues that I consider important. Things like how application management works, coherency of the platform, stability of ABIs, simplicity of the platform, non-bloatedness, lack of fashion-oriented design, etc.

This is a pretty uncharitable interpretation of my comment. I currently don’t even use Linux on desktop (though I have in the past). Like I said, Haiku is very cool, and I love the idea behind it and Serenity, but in terms of what is closer to a useable desktop, I think it is still a while off, and will always suffer from app support (if that isn’t as important to you as it is to me that’s fine).

I do agree though that all of the Linux distros that are aimed at being minimalist aren’t simple (e.g Arch).

Though there are some like Puppy Linux which I think have quite cool ideas around it.

Please refrain from projecting whatever ideas you have around “Linux desktop people” onto me.

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