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Comment by IronWolve | Hacker News Reader

Linux desktop experience does suck, but, BUT, the powerful tools and applications more than make up for it.

Desktop isn't unified (X11 or Wayland), libraries are not unified, the drivers/sound system isnt unified. Its basically a bunch of different flavors with issues that you are stuck with, locked in with.

Google Android has the same binary blob hell for drivers. Chrome OS has some powerful containers (on supported hardware), unlocking more power.

Ubuntu versions are tied to projects, so google and other corps make you use what version they want to dev on their platforms.

Redhat has the same issue, killing off centos community releases for a streamed os platform. (Same as Suse)

Arch at least tries to fit the need of letting you upgrade, but you still have the same issues with a unified platform, but provides the applications, some apps are stale but at least they exist in their community repos.

WSL is really just a platform to allow you to take the power of the terminal to do so many powerful things, skipping the desktop, allowing a windows desktop that solves all the issues linux has.

Pretty much, Windows with WSL, and Android emulation, you can do anything. The only pure linux I have at home now is pi machine, and I only use it as a console box.

But I still play with Arch in vmware (vmware supports nested virtualization, virtualbox doesnt). Its amazing the power windows can unlock linux

Now when the m2 mac mini's come out, I might just have to play with virtualized linux as a desktop. Gaming, android/streaming can fill the lack of games, just as you can do on linux.

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>Linux desktop experience does suck

There are sure a lot of improvements to be had, but I would literally go crazy if somebody took away my Linux distros and forced me to use literally anything else. Every other option on the market forces a completely different way of computing that is just ugly, inefficient, non-free and generally shit.

Once I found i3/sway, my dreams came true. So much power and anything less feels useless and ugly.

I get it that it takes some knowledge and tinkering and therefore is not for everyone, but now I would get crazy as well, if somebody takes them off.

i3 was pretty instant for me and made me go from casually using Linux at home to making Ubuntu 20 LTS a stable daily driver at work. I think I needed one tutorial to get my config and status bar then I was good to go. It took a little while longer to settle on a Tmux config but starting from scratch I very quickly got the most efficient workflow I have ever had.

Same here, I now even use FancyWM on any windows machine I need to work on to try and replicate part of the experience. I can't image anything else besides running Linux as my base hosts. The flexibility, power, and clarity of underlying systems compared to something like windows is what I never want to lose

This might be correct for you, but incorrect for most of the people. Linux desktop experience may suck even if it does not suck for you particularly.

Well it's true for me too. The first thing I do when I get a new laptop is try out windows (it's pre-installed) and of course I want to like it but it just doesn't compare to GNOME3... I always end up going back to Linux. And I have used both extensively and adapted to both work-flows and I'd say GNOME3 is superior once you adapt to it.

No you don't need a minimize or maximize button, they are actually useless in the GNOME work-flow, and unnecessary on windows too.

Could you explain the Gnome workflow and how it doesn't necessitate the use of minimizing and maximizing Windows?

Not parent, but I personally put relevant (few) windows on the same desktop and switch between them with a 3-finger swipe (which is faster/smoother than what OSX have, which is unbearably slow). On a given desktop I change a window by either swiping up with 3 fingers for a fast overview window, or just press Super. Compared to OSX, this view is not that overcrowded (due to easily having more desktops), so I can actually find what I’m looking for, and they also have icons (try having multiple browsers open in osx and finding the one you want). Super+~, which is the same as in OSX is also great for switching between multiple windows of the same program.

OSX can have multiple desktops too. in fact the way i arrange windows on gnome vs OSX is pretty much the same.

I know, but the desktops there doesn’t grow dynamically. That’s a huge difference (though I’m sure there is an extension/setting for that)

i keep most windows in fullscreen and use the expose function or how it's called that shows all windows in reduced size to switch. sometimes i put two or three windows side by side if i need to see them at the same time.

i also make use of multiple workspaces/desktops to arrange windows that are related to each other.

so i use the maximize function but never feel the need to minimize windows unless it's a window that i don't need to reopen ever.

From what I’ve seen of desktop environments that try to emulate gnome 3 (and what I vaguely remember of toying around ubuntu ~10 years ago), wasn’t gnome a bit of an attempt to look and feel like Windows?

I don’t see it. If anything, the new windows is a huge gnome copy.

I get the sense that the majority of people are using their computers in a far different way than I am. For me, my computer is a terminal first (I don’t even start X11 on startup!) and behaves as a text editor, web browser, and a way to execute my software development tasks. Perhaps it’s not the glorious graphic experience most people want, but it is what I want.

In the meantime the lackluster Linux graphics department makes it that I pretty much locked into Windows. While it is getting better, I still miss capable editors like Affinity Photo and Designer, Publisher.

Video and 3D got some good software now, but it remains that for me, Linux should push for graphics development far more.

My main problem with switching to Linux is that most apps just can't make use of GPU acceleration or HW decoding. This includes browser HW video decoding, HW acceleration in video editors.

There are some CLI hacks you can do to try to fix this but my time is precious and I can't afford to play sysadmin at home.

Meanwhile all HW acceleration use cases have worked flawlessly out of the box on windows every single time, which is why I can't recommend people switch to Linux.

What will they think when they try to watch YouTube or Netflix and the laptop fans ramp up and the battery drains instantly because HW video decode in browser doesn't work out of the box?

> the lackluster Linux graphics department

I have to say that I hate statements like this that manage to project a reversal of responsibilities onto the linux ecosystem. The "lack" is with the vendors of the applications you use, not with linux.

linux on the desktop won't suck with open hardware 2d/3d acceleration. when will this happen? probably never.

> Linux desktop experience does suck

Hard disagree.

I author multimedia documents, play AAA videogames (on Steam and GOG), watch videos, access my gadgets and devices, organize my ebooks collection, print documents on my wireless laser printer, etc.

There's not much desktop Linux cannot easily accomplish for me.

This "bad Linux desktop" meme needs to die.

A desktop is a million little transparent standard functionalities, you can list everything that works and I'll certainly celebrate it with you because it gets better every year and I love it, but hundreds of broken functionalities remain.

Every time I install Linux there is something that doesn't work. As recently as last year it took me days to get the Wifi working because of driver problems. I still haven't got Bluetooth to work right on my current workstation. Similarly the USB file transfer UI is broken because the buffer size is too large and it's not been accounted for in the transfer completion calculation. It's a million things and pretty basic and essential ones.

And it's impossible to debug, you have to spend 10 hours typing obscure commands because the Linux voodoo-priests have never heard of buttons and GUIs.

It used to be that Windows worked for every standard small functionality. And on the rare occasions when you had a problem you would immediately know what part of the control panel or the registry to go to and fix it yourself. Occasionally you had to google and people would give you simple instructions to follow. That was before Microsoft ruined it, but my point is there was a clear difference between Linux and Windows and the best Linux distro did not come close to the level of UX that Windows did.

It's not a fair comparison because Linux is so fragmented but to me it remains that the Linux desktop experience is broken in some way for many people who use it.

I don't disagree with the gist of your comment, but by that token, I don't remember Windows ever "just working" (especially not for games!), and neither does macOS...

(The example I always give is that my wireless HP LaserJet printer works automagically with Ubuntu, but always gives trouble with macOS!)

So... all desktops suck?

> but hundreds of broken functionalities remain.

And since pretty much forever, even more so on Windows.

The difference is that windows users are used to those defects, they pretty much probably didnt realize there was a choice, so that is always the baseline for them.

On the whole, if you took a blank computer, gave linux and gave windows, people who had never used a computer before would find themselves more helped with linux than windows. Hell, for nearly a decade it was impossible to install windows on a sata disk(which was by far the standard) without breaking out a floppy drive.

Is this satire? People just think Windows has majority market share by chance? You can't beat free except in the OS space and not with quality?

Users will shop around for web browsers and everything else but settle for Windows because... why?

No, the point is just because something became popular doesn't mean it was because it was a high quality product technically or in UI. The early iPods sucked in usability (controversial!) And functionality, but became popular anyway. I had to support them, they, coupled with iTunes, we're horrible. People just learn to use them and eventually one quirky way of doing things becomes 'the norm.'

The 'Linux Desktop' is just as solid as Windows... depending on what you do with it. Just as Windows could be horrible compared to Linux... depending on what you're doing with it

Network effect, relative difficulty of switching an OS and familiarity . It even heavily effects OSX, which has the marketshare it has due to its platform integration, more than anything.

It is not a fair competition.

You said it yourself, free beats everything else. For the vast majority of people the OS is free, they either buy a Mac (OSX already installed) or a Windows PC with Windows already installed. So installing Linux is actually not free (it requires extra work).

I would actually not be surprised if the market share of Linux exceeds the market share of Windows where Windows was installed by the user (let's exclude corporate environments because the discussion is much more complicated)

Oh come on, I had the most basic request of Windows: keep the laptop on while it's connected to a screen and power and I close the screen. It failed.

Seriously, how is that not working out of the box in 2022? Even macs get this right.

And that's not even getting into the install process and driver downloads, printer configuration, setting up containers, a proper posix shell out of the box, local accounts, and on and on.

Windows is basically good for running Steam and has many more OEM supported hardware options. What other advantages does it even have?

>And on the rare occasions when you had a problem you would immediately know what part of the control panel or the registry to go to and fix it yourself. Occasionally you had to google...

I don't believe anyone in the history of ever has fixed a problem on their Windows box by confidently wading into the system registry and changing exactly the correct thing. Of all the things to wave around as superior to the Linux way of doing things, the system registry is an odd choice.

In fact, I lay a challenge: without googling, type the full path of any single registry key.

I can’t pass your challenge but I’ve done it. Memory doesn’t work that way.

Open regedit HKLM/CurrentVersion?/MicrosoftWindows/…/<something>/Run and delete whatever dumb Dell startup tray app has set itself up to start automatically. I don’t remember the name of the key but I can navigate to it quickly using arrow keys.

Of course this is many years ago before I knew about msconfig…

>In fact, I lay a challenge: without googling, type the full path of any single registry key.

Strawman.

You can click registry paths and look around, you can search, and sometimes when something is borked, messages in the logs even tell you what registry key to fiddle with.

I've been fiddling with the registry before google was around, so it certainly does not require google or any search. Those only make it easier to share things with others.

I agree and disagree. The driver issue is frustrating, but I think this is mostly a choice of hardware issue. If you can get a wifi chip with officially supported drivers it’s pretty painless. Broadcom, in my experience have consistently been the most painful.

There are ui configuration options, but the last I tried them (long ago) they felt inconsistent and painful. It quickly became clear that you needed a terminal to solve most issues, and when you didn’t start that way, you’re now faced with both an uncomfortable environment, and a problem to solve. So I opted to get used to the terminal, and I totally fell in love with it.

For my (not experienced) level of use, I find that it’s just several different systems. Once you know the name of the system, you can read it’s docs, find it’s configs, etc. I think one of the reasons for the recent popularity of arch is that you are given the choice of, and are made familiar with several of these systems to build your install. Maybe you’re using netctl, dhcpcd, or networkmanager - but you made that choice, and probably the initial configuration.

I don’t like the control panel, and the registry is difficult to navigate. Suffering through deeply nested menus to find a setting is a horrible experience for me. I’d much prefer grepping a directory of files for keywords. I have more tools at my disposal. Plus then I can version control and automatically provision a new machine instead of a hunt through ever-changing uis. You’re right that the original configuration takes some extra research and time, but I find for my own setups that the automated setup is worth the investment.

This is all very subjective —- I certainly don’t think you’re wrong, but I wanted to share some perspective on how it can be used (in the off chance you weren’t aware) - i hope it might make it more friendly the next time you cross paths :).

Hell, if you happen to have a supported hardware, linux will give you the best, out-of-the-box experience with it (no “searching for a solution online” and whatever windows doing)

> I’d much prefer grepping a directory of files for keywords

Do you think it's right way in general? If yes, please join my imaginary experiment case:

* you are part of Corporate IT support team

* your company is let's say Korean speaking and your OS interface (locale) is Korean as well

* you have phone call for support request on for something simple like changing desktop background or changing laptop sleep interval be not 5 minutes but 15

I can imagine in say Windows 11, someone press "win", type "battery" in local language and finds the needed setting, but how someone would "grep" for something in non-native language - I'm not sure.

----

I can imagine more examples, say - what is the way to ask for remote assistance or MDM or disk encryption rollout by CorpIT or wiping data in case of loss or... which would demonstrate to me - it's not ready for broader audience beyond 5% of deviation of population (nerds). And your grepping example, to me, says - such use cases are not even considered when someone says "linux is ready for desktop".

Internationalization is a strong argument.

I don’t like it, but you might be right. I’d still prefer a layer of abstraction between config file keys/comments so your configuration can be localized, but there are additional issues here with user-vs-author comments which the UI solution wouldn’t need to consider.

Of course you are correct, I couldn’t imagine teaching grep to my grandpa, most relatives, or even all coworkers. It shouldn’t be necessary, but it would be lovely if this was always an option. I’d much prefer having control, than an opaque system that migrates my settings forwards. Maybe I’m advocating for a system that supports both?

Thank you for posting, I never considered this, I need to think about it.

I'm glad if it helped you to take a look from another angle.

Then probably this would be helpful too - try to imagine why the most popular Linux based user facing systems - Android and Chrome OS, are not any kind of "traditional" Linux desktop distribution alike. Does it says something on users?

What wonders me as well - when Linux desktops start to finally use telemetry and stop being blind on real user cases, not on the imaginary nerds needs. It will give great productivity boost. Microsoft has it and they know their auditorium. The techies who knows in person how logging is important on fixing bugs - has no such logs! Ridiculous to me.

> Every time I install Linux there is something that doesn't work

Please show me some software where it is not the case. Like, not being sarcastic, windows has million little cuts all around and my mac is the only modern hardware that managed to reboot on its own. I don’t think Linux is comparably worse, if we are being as unbiased as possible.

Sure, in certain compartments windows and osx can be better, but they all suck in others. For example, having multiple screens seems to be an insurmountable problem humanity is not yet ready to solve.

>And it's impossible to debug

At least it can be debugged. Good luck doing that on Windows. It isn't by chance that the most common advice is "format and install again."

>And on the rare occasions when you had a problem you would immediately know what part of the control panel or the registry to go to and fix it yourself.

I vastly prefer running few commands over going through a dozen of interfaces from multiple eras or worse going through the mess that registry is.

Yeah, Linux desktop experience rocks.

I acknowledge it has flaws.

Even macOS, the supposed gold standard of good usability and quality, frustrates me to no end at times.

For content creation, Linux is lost. No 10bit support, lack of professional tools like those from Adobe and overall philosophy "from nerds to nerds" is usually time consuming for regular users.

>No 10bit support

What does that mean?

10 bit per color channel instead of 8.

Yeah, should've been more specific. I know what 10-bit means, was asking for the "no support" bit.

Probably 10-bit color. Important for photographers, since modern cameras have 10-bit color sensors. GIMP only supports the sRGB color space with 8-bit color, so it doesn't work properly with wide-gamut monitors.

More like 14-bit, but same issue.

Even 16bit.

Sometimes it is called HDR. 10bit is crucial for colour grading. Photography, cinematography, design...

> For content creation, Linux is lost

Linux obviously isn't lost, given that I and many others use Linux for content creation.

It would help the discussion if people stopped talking in hyperbolic all-or-nothing extremes.

Like I said, this is a meme that needs to die.

What kind of content creation are you make? Where are those many? I would really like to know.

Linux Desktop doesn't really suck anymore. Enough time passed that the experience of the high-level (ie. desktop) part of any distro is good enough*.

Worst part of Linux is the death by a thousand paper cuts. Bluetooth may work or not work. Apps may be compatible or not with Wayland. Power consumption may not be efficient. Computer may not resume from sleep. The browser may burn CPU when playing videos. Etc.etc.

Lots of stuff like this can happen, and I guess, anyone will experience one or two. I've been using Linux for a long time, and there is always something.

Everything can be fixed with patience (and experience, that one may not have), but Linux is definitely an O/S that needs some work, once one goes past a casual use. Casual users may not notice.

My favourite niggles: clipboard not being always shared, and file managers not sharing bookmarks data across them. These are definitely embarrassing.

> "Worst part of Linux is the death by a thousand paper cuts."

Funny you should say this, because it's exactly that feeling that drove me away from Windows. For many years I tolerated Windows because "It's what everyone uses", but eventually there came a point where the "paper cuts" just added up to where I could no longer tolerate it. The annoyances and frustrations were bad enough that if I did not have Linux to fall back on, I would literally have given up computer work entirely.

This is my perspective too. Whenever I find myself having to use Windows (which these days is just for games with Windows-only anti-cheat), the annoyances feel so much more pronounced.

especially funny is that an OS called "Windows" has a laughably crappy window manager. Having to move the mouse to the small titlebar to move a window? having to hit a corner or side very precisely to resize? You'd think no developer working on windows ever tried the damn thing.

You can do both of these operations using the Windows Key + Arrow Keys on the keyboard.

what does this do?

I have now seen what this does, but that is nothing compared to what nearly all window managers on Linux allows, next time you're at such an installation, try hold alt down, and press anywhere in a window with left mouse and move, or just somewhere remotely close to a corner and right click and move.

Hardware producers, inevitably, produce drivers for Windows first (and possibly, only). This of course doesn't guarantee quality drivers, but does guarantee drivers, which is better than no drivers at all, at least in the short/mid term.

I did have problems in the past due to recent Ryzen and ethernet drivers for example, and using last Linux kernels (or even compiling them) is something that can't be asked to the general public.

Fragmentation is also a very real problem, and it's inherent in Linux. I've discussed in another post about fragmentation of the GUI toolkit libraries problem, which has very visible consequences in daily usage.

I am not looking forward to wayland upgrade time. At the moment it's fine, and I'm sure it will all be figured out eventually, but the transition will be a hassle and I have my doubts about whether some features will make it or not.

> Bluetooth may work or not work

In my 4yrs+ of using Linux, this has never been a problem for me.

> Apps may be compatible or not with Wayland

App developer's fault. Besides xwayland bridges that gap.

> Power consumption may not be efficient

Use Wayland for GUI apps. Use more cli applications.

> Computer may not resume from sleep

This one I have to concede. It's been wonky but for me now seems reliably stable with my setup.

> The browser may burn CPU when playing videos

This one has been fixed recently. Chromium and Firefox already support hw video decode with Firefox set to make it the default configuration in FF 103.

> clipboard not being always shared

I don't know what your setup is but gnome's gpaste clipboard experience is 100x better than any OS I've used before.

> file managers not sharing bookmarks data across them

Have never come across this use case. Why would you expect this to be a feature? Even Windows doesn't support this feature when you swap file managers.

>Use Wayland for GUI apps. Use more cli applications.

How about "the OS display server, composer and GUI and should be well interested in the OS and perfectly usable out fo the box for all use cases".

My free time is precious and I don't want to play sysadmin on my home computer with Wayland and X11.

Windows and MacOS have their display servers figured out for decades, so the user doesn't have to think about what a display server is, while Linux is still juggling 2 different ones both with their pros and cons depending on your apps and hardware, one or the other might or or it might not.

I work in cybersecurity so everyone in the company is fluent in Linux which we use on a daily basis in various flavors both CLI and a few DEs, yet nearly all of use either Windows or Mac or both at home. Have a guess why that is.

I suspect your colleagues prefer Windows & Mac over Linux not because of Wayland incompatibility but rather because the software selection is better covered over there. E.g gaming software generally targets Windows OS.

It is no secret that Linux software has historically not been targeted at the masses. Add to that, developers who are not interested in publishing software on Linux platforms. You can see why the overall experience might not be that great on desktop Linux compared to Windows or Mac. Even though this might be changing as more users feel comfortable with Linux.

IMO iOS, Windows, Linux all have their strengths and flaws; it would be wrong to compare them side-by-side.

This is a very uninformed opinion of how Linux works. I'll post a few random notions, because there's a bit too much to talk about.

Linux has, because of legacy reasons, a more complex than required clipboard concept. Because of this, different apps may use it in different ways, and have unexpected behaviors. Some applications (I think, but not sure, Libreoffice) may lose the clipboard content when closed. The very fact that one needs clipboard managers to workaround the base clipboard behavior is proof that Linux's clipboard implementation is not working (from a user perspective). And beware that clipboard managers may have unintended security issues (I'm positive some do), ie. storing user data on disk (copying confidential information to the clipboard is inevitable, and you do the maths).

Bluetooth has been historically broken. Bluez has been poorly implementend and documented. Here's an old post: http://www.bennybottema.com/2010/08/08/how-ubuntus-broken-bl...; it's old, but the situation has been bad for a very long time. As of Jul/2022, at least some (potentially all) Ubuntu distros ship with a broken pulseaudio/bluetooth configuration by default; a bug has been opened for a couple of years, and has been ignored by Canonical.

File managers depend on the graphic toolkits used. Applications that use different toolkits will display different file managers, and for example, they won't share bookmarks. This means that you open an application and bookmark a directory, then other applications, and the bookmark is not displayed.

> Use Wayland for GUI apps. Use more cli applications.

Telling the user to change applications because of problems of the operating system is nonsensical.

Everything I shared is from my own personal experience with using desktop Linux. Obviously your experience is going to be different from mine, as that depends on what software we use and what distro we pick.

That said. Bluetooth works as expected on my hardware. Clipboard sharing works as well, there was a time it was missing on gnome terminal but can't say am scratching my head about that one today.

Can't say I've see folder bookmarking across different file managers, even on Windows. You have to point me to examples here.

Telling a user how to reasonably fix a problem trump's whatever misconceptions you have about desktop Linux. They can always put Linux down and use whatever operating system works best for them, if they don't want to try alternative solutions.

> Bluetooth may work or not work. Apps may be compatible or not with Wayland. Power consumption may not be efficient. Computer may not resume from sleep. The browser may burn CPU when playing videos.

Haven't touched Linux desktop for 10+years but funny it's still like this?

Is there any certified hardware that actually has stable Linux desktop experiences?

There are some ubuntu-certified laptops, but I have very little problem with Thinkpads (T480 for personal use).

I am using Ubuntu as my main Desktop for the last 15 months and am much happier with it than 15+ years on the Mac.

Virtual Desktops is really powerful to structure different workflows. Office can be covered entirely though online solutions.

Yes, Gaming doesn't fly. But that also holds true for a Mac. Just get a PS5.

> I am using Ubuntu as my main Desktop for the last 15 months and am much happier with it than 15+ years on the Mac

But the million dollar question is, which desktop environment are you using?

I think it's Gnome. Haven't changed anything from the default install. And I think that further underlines my point. I installed it, liked it, and for me it works perfectly.

Also a Ubuntu user here, and it has been my daily driver for the last 10 years.

I ditched the M$ gaming partition in '19 and moved completely into Linux. Apart from occasional issues, it just works.

> Yes, Gaming doesn't fly

How? Most games work and they work great.

Could you expand what you mean here? If I open the Ubuntu App store there are some games, most are casual. Xonotic is one game that I tried and found impressive, but I am not much into FPS. Steam has Dota and Civ, but the selection is quite small compared to Windows.

You should double check what is available via Steam on Linux. https://www.protondb.com/

Basically everything for Windows runs on Linux now. Some things have anticheat issues, but even there things are getting better. The only thing I've had trouble to get running is Zoo Tycoon 2, a game from 2004

Which is funny, because old games often run better under Linux than under new Windows versions. The WineHQ page for the game does not have many entries sadly, https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio....

they are all in the protondb

High-quality native-to-Linux games are few and far between. Valve is doing amazing work with Proton, though, and many games are just as performant as they are on Windows. Some are even more performant than on Windows (though that's not super common).

This really isnt true anymore. Steam, proton, and the recent improvements in anticipation of the steam deck have really changed gaming on linux.

I bounced around distros and ended up going back to Pop-OS. It's been the one that is the most stable and has all of the general features that I want in a daily driver. I don't want to have to mess around with my host and would rather spin up VMs for things that I'd want to tinker with.

Linux desktop sucks, in absolute terms. Relatively, not. Windows desktop sucks. Mac desktop sucks. Chromebook sucks. Android sucks. Ipad sucks. Ios sucks.

Our standards are just really, really low.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPRvc2UMeMI

PC desktops indeed suck, but I have much less problem with mobile OSs. Not sure whether it is due to the more modern OS, the reduced problem domain or the higher level OS-program interface.

You obviously haven't used a recent Windows or Linux machine. Unless you need accessibility features GNOME is waaay better than Windows 11 in basically every way and I find GNOME unusable without a bunch of extensions. The current Windows 11 desktop is a catastrophe way worse than linux desktops

I have been using Ubuntu on a new Dell work laptop for the past 6 weeks and have been pleasantly surprised. Everything basically works. My only complaint is that the machine fails to wake from closed lid sleep at least once per week. So my M1 Pro is by far my uptime champ for laptops (I sometimes go 30-40 days between reboots and it never crashes).

Anecdotal experience, my intel MacBook Pro also fails to wake up from closed lid from time to time..

Yes, my wife’s Intel MacBook Pro does this. They are junk, especially when running Catalina. My theory is that the Intel models with T1/T2 controllers reached a point where they were too complex and difficult to keep stable.

> Linux desktop experience does suck

Not for me. Blackbox on X11 is exactly what I need and want. Apps looking the same is not something I care about.

> Redhat has the same issue, killing off centos community releases for a streamed os platform. (Same as Suse)

What is this about Suse? I'm on openSUSE (Suse's community release) right now. 15.4 was just released.

In 2010, I would point at the little issues with Linux and advise people to use Windows instead.

By now, Windows has gained so many issues that Linux is obviously superior.

Like you press the start key, the Windows menu only halfway opens, your keystrokes go to nowhere, and then you're stuck with a crashed bar at the bottom of your screen. Or like you put your Surface Pro to sleep, but it disobeys you and checks for emails while it's in your backpack and out of wifi range. So you arrive at your destination with a hot brick of empty battery. Or like you're on a live show and then your system reboots for an Update that you can't cancel plus you loose all unsaved data in the process.

Linux desktop experience is amazing. I feel crippled when I have to use mac or windows.

(Though of course there is no universal desktop linux experience. That's kind of the point).

>Pretty much, Windows with WSL, and Android emulation, you can do anything.

Unfortunately, they haven't figured out hardware access in WSL2 so doing stuff with serial ports and the like is impossible or requires annoying workarounds like creating network tunnels and connecting them to a pts using socat. In WSL1 you did have access to Windows COM ports.

If Windows was so bereft of design flaws why couldn't they provide a superior terminal experience without inventing WSL?

They did. PowerShell.

WSL is for the folks that buy macOS instead of supporting Linux OEMs, because they couldn't care less and are happy witb whatever POSIX CLI they can get.

WSL is a godsend for Linux-inclined devs operating corporate laptops where Windows is mandated and filled with counterintrusion software up the wazoo.

Those corps also have Linux versions of the same software.

I would never work for a company where I have to use a "corporate Windows" laptop. If management does not understand developer needs, working there is likely to be not pleasant in many aspects.

They understand the needs of Windows developers.

Even a Windows developer cannot use a typical locked-down enterprise PC. For many tasks you would need admin rights. I guess typically Windows developers solve in such company solve that by having 2 PCs. One official office PC and then one R&D PC which is not under control of corporate IT (depending on the company officially connected to non-intranet network zone or just completely secret form corporate IT).

Of course for really hairy driver work you want to have a separate machine regardless of the OS. But for the last 15 years I have managed to do Linux development with having root access and still not breaking the office side of work. Although if you usea dd to write system images for embedded systems many times a day you are playing a bit with fire. Thought for a long time I should patch dd so it wouldn't overwrite anything bigger than 64GB. But nowadays we mostly have better firmware update methods, so dd is used rarely and my patch still unwritten...

Because Powershell dev is opinionated -- necessarily so -- and to appeal to Linux devs you need a way to make a Linux command line available. I had mine built to run Arch Linux and Fish terminal. It worked pretty well, but compared to a raw Linux machine it is slow.

WSL is not superior, just another interface to do the job. And why not do the job on Windows while using known commands?

because you cannot impress other scholars saying "I use Arch, btw", job is for grown ups!

Windows terminal is amazing, you can have a tabbed terminal with powershell, powershell 7, linux flavors, shell replacements, cygwin, cloud provider connections and much more.

In windows terminal, I use powershell for vmware vsphere administration and linux for ssh. The only main issue I have is ubuntu 22.04 gives ssh key errors with redhat servers. I have a redhat wsl for ssh ive been using.

I was a cygwin terminal user for decades. (work laptops are always locked down windows).

With linux in windows terminal, i've stopped using cygwin. I still sometimes use mobaterm (cygwin based), but even mobaterm allows tabbed environments like windows terminal. It even imports them. Also cygwin ssh works with redhat servers without ssh key issues.

How about docker support on Windows? Does it still require Hyper-V?

That’s one of the biggest hurdles preventing Windows to become a dev environment at my work.

I haven't installed docker in vmware linux os, but you can set nested acceleration, so it should work fine.

I can get WSL2 to work in Win11 vm in vmware, so it should work fine.

Any specific case on how Hyper-V is an issue with Docker support as you see it?

Assuming you are talking about Docker containers with Linux, not containers with Windows, it's pretty well integrated even with WSL2 (on some news I've checked, from mid 2019 https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/docker-deskto... ) which is Hyper-V based and doesn't stand in your way.

@IronWolve: "Linux desktop experience does suck .."

Same ole same ole FUD .. it even does phones better than MICROS~1

PureOS – a pure Linux phone experience https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/pureos-mobile/

> Desktop isn't unified (X11 or Wayland), libraries are not unified, the drivers/sound system isnt unified. Its basically a bunch of different flavors with issues that you are stuck with, locked in with.

Why would it be unified? It's mostly a bazaar of software written by different people to scratch their own itches.

> Redhat has the same issue, killing off centos community releases for a streamed os platform

CentOS Stream is no different than enabling the debian-updates repository in Debian. Your system won't suddenly just start pulling in breaking changes.

The Linux desktop is great because it doesn't make me feel like a rat in a maze.

Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.

> "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven."

Ironically, that quote from Paradise Lost is spoken by the character Satan and is intended to deceive his fellow fallen angels into believing being condemned to Tartarus after losing their revolt isn't so bad, even though it is, quite literally, the depths of Hell.

On the other hand, considering the topic, maybe it's rather apropos instead.

So what you're saying is, Linux sucks?

Someone has clearly never tried xmonad.

From a Desktop perspective, Linux always has been, and, I suspect will remain, a ghetto.

Compared to what? Nothing is more ghetto than $MS Windows, randomly breaking with updates and going slow performance.

what you mean binary hell?

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