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Comment by xalava | Hacker News Reader

As a desktop, Linux is now fully functional for most users. I know administrations running on Linux, law firms, and even my dad. Beginner users don't care about choices, they get Linux Mint or similar with LibreOffice and Firefox and they are good to go for most of their tasks. For advanced users, the abundance is a key benefit of this ecosystem.

No company is fully focused on the desktop OS, and I don't see why they should. This article is contradictory saying "desktop operating system will lie in the hands of Apple with macOS and us with Linux". It is not because Microsoft prioritize cloud services that it abandons desktops, it is not a priority for many Linux developers and sponsors as stated above in the article, and it doesn't seem a high priority for Apple either.

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The thing about Linux is that it’s hackable and you can customise it to your liking. I’ve been using it for about a decade and the only thing it can’t do is run iTunes so I have a virtual machine for Windows stuff. It’s worth having a separate Linux box where you can tinker with new software and customisations without those changes affecting your daily driver OS. I found that over time the more customisations you do the more the OS breaks down and starts to get buggy. Having a dedicated box for tinkering is essential and you can just do a fresh install when you’ve made many irreversible mistakes.

What I would love is easy GPU (and other hardware) passthrough to the (Windows) VM. You can already use "real" partitions on separate drives to maximize performance. Graphics is the only thing that's complicated.

Tbh, I only tried it on a laptop and it was hell, it ended up needing a mountain of configuration and software just to pass an nVidia GPU (fortunately a Quadro, which is slighly easier) to Windows, which has the software that needs it the most.

Is it easier on desktop computers with an IGP and a discrete card, or two graphics cards? Or do you still need to fuck around with the VBIOS, fight with power management and hybrid modes (I guess not?), use Looking Glass/RDP/dummy display/DP/HDMI plug and a ton of configuration that sometimes fails after updates?

Guess I will try it again on my next computer, which must be a powerful Ryzen build.

Modern Windows is fairly robust and self-repairing, it's hard to brick it doing typical user stuff.

Unlike Linux. A few wrong clicks and there goes the GUI.

I have never had a Linux desktop that didn't eventually go up in flames after a routine update.

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