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Comment by hot_gril | Hacker News Reader

No. I use Linux on headless servers all the time, and even I don't mess with Linux DEs. The mere fact that there's more than one widely used is undesirable, and even a popular one like GNOME changed way too drastically (2 to 3). Last time I bothered with all this was GNOME 2 before 3 existed, which was ok at the time.

The real Linux DE for the masses is ChromeOS, but people don't usually bucket it with the others. And that is Google's way or the highway.

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This never made sense to me. Why is it bad there's several, especially at the current level of maturity, where both GNOME and KDE are perfectly viable options.

More moving parts when something goes wrong, which it will. You don't have to specify that you're using "macOS Ventura with the Glendale desktop environment and Hwy 101 window server" or something. Win2000 help might even be relevant in Win10 cause they prioritized familiarity.

Even at my job where gurus are managing our workstations full-time, Linux users randomly had to all switch desktop environments cause of X dependency getting too old, and the new one partially broke compatibility with our remote desktop. It's not a perfectly layered cake.

I also don't believe that people's use cases are really so different that there need to be so multiple widely-used Linux DEs. I'd get it if there were GNOME for almost everyone then other niche DEs for the rest. Again, so many people with a variety of use cases have managed ok with the basically unchanging Windows UI for decades.

This is inherent in Cathedral vs Bazaar style of development though.. so, deal with it I guess?

What I'm saying is most people don't deal with it.

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