The Linux Desktop Is Hard to Love

> Most users want to boot up their machine and get to work. Linux can absolutely do this, but if a user hits a minor snag, then I guarantee they will have more difficulty fixing it compared to an issue found in macOS.

You use mac so you find it easier to fix macproblems. I use Linux and find it easier to fix Linux problems.

> Design is important. The user experience will make or break an operating system.

Not really. Just look at windows. I press the windows key, type reboot and it gives me a link for the movie ReBoot. The Windows design is a joke. There must be something else going on, OP.

> Another advantage macOS has over most other Linux desktops is tailored hardware.

Tailored to be bad I guess. My coworker with a mac can't run more than 1 external screen or 8k graphics. Couldn't pair to her sony headphones either. No such problems on Linux.

The "idea" of the article is true. However I do think the KDE plasma desktop experience (at least since I've been using it a few months ago) works really well and is on par with macOS.

The UI of all the KDE applications are very similar, and the 2 others app I use (IntelliJ and Firefox) have their own cross-platform UI anyways. The desktop is stable and fast and I haven't noticed any missing features we "take for granted" on macOS and Windows.

I do admit there are a few flaws. And by "few" I mean, basically package installation. I need to use sudo apt-get or dpkg -i or "Marketplace" or sometimes just build directly. I'm using Debian, maybe Arch is better here but even `pacman -S` is confusing to people who've never used Linux before. Also you can't just click on a .deb to install it which makes no sense and is a major flaw IMO as most people just download from site + click to install on other OSs anyways. There are also a few areas where plasma actually does things better than macOS and Windows (e.g. click-to-open, "move here / copy here" dialog).

IMO the biggest issue is that the Linux desktop space is so fragmented, it took me a while to find plasma. My first Linux desktop was Ubuntu on xfce which is IMO garbage and unless I'm mistaken still the de-facto default. I definitely don't think that everyone should converge on plasma, but I do think it would be nice if everyone can agree to recommend plasma to newcomers: yeah it has a lot of bloat for power-users and may be slower, but as of now nothing else really compares in user-friendliness.

Tough to agree with some of this. For one, these days it's pretty obviously a false or irrelevant dichotomy to frame the situation as Mac OS vs. Linux. A better comparison would be more like Mac OS vs. $distro. Linux is what, my Raspberry Pi? My phone? My kid's laptop? My work desktop? Am I supposed to average all those out?

Since e.g. iOS isn't being included here on the Apple side, it makes more sense to pick one of the author's footnote distros and use that comparison instead.

> but if a user hits a minor snag, then I guarantee they will have more difficulty fixing it compared to an issue found in macOS.

I wouldn't take that bet. Not even close. The customizability and openness factors in favor of Linux also provide a benefit in yielding gobs of workarounds.

However, Linux critics who focus on ergonomics are well known for not being able to step out of some-imagined-user's seat for a moment and make things work for themselves as they go, and so they essentially refuse to use workarounds, and they get stuck in a panic loop where over time they slowly reveal that they want COTS, perfected, ASAP. The archetypal context is the intellectual critic selecting an OS for the just-do-it performer; it's another tense dichotomy that will result in a loop where the critic constantly asks, "does it just work? Can I just do it? If not, then fail." The critic is too sensitive to the performer archetype.

Still, I think it's better for the author to stick with the original argument from ergonomics based on one side they perceive as lacking. Going into comparative issues raises the "some distros are actually amazing" spectre again.

And IMO: Tailored hardware's equivalent in Linux is asking around or searching hardware databases to see what works best. Quite often it's a brand.

The Linux "tailoring" interface is easily observed in headlines about Linux developers communicating with specific brands. NVidia being a famous one. Linux devs are trying to tailor (remembering back to OOTB Linux hardware support in the early 2010s vs Windows--when it worked well, it was amazingly automatic and made Windows look bad. Windows caught up a little bit since then, in that area), but the Linux devs need direct brand support in a lot of cases.

At that point it becomes almost a consumer rights issue, which highlights another big-picture value of the Linux ecosystem and the reason a lot of people decided they'll simply look for needed ergonomics workarounds as they go.