Is 2024 the year of Windows on the Desktop? | Hacker News Reader

Is 2024 the year of Windows on the Desktop?

osnews.com

16 pointsd1stc10 comments

For anyone who has not tried Linux as a desktop lately i recommend to give it another spin. The last years have progressed a lot, since around Ubuntu 20.04 and later, all the classic things that one should take for granted that used to be trouble on Linux, are now finally sorted out.

Plugging in and out a secondary display - actually works. Fractional scaling per display - actually works. Bluetooth - actually works. Audio - actually works. Screen sharing - actually works. Closing the lid on your laptop and expecting it to wake from sleep again when you open it - actually works. Printers - actually works. Playing 4k youtube videos - ok, it still burns some more battery but otherwise works.

Basically, everything just works. As for the rest of the OS, the article gives a good picture of what it feels like going back to Windows. With Linux, the OS is just there for you, stable as a rock with no interruptions. It's a boring appliance, doing what it is supposed to, nothing else, letting you focus on your applications. Compared with Windows that you constantly have to pet around with updates, installers and keeping the spyware on a leach.

I tried it, and basic Ubuntu immediately failed with my 5k monitor, especially when I changed the scaling to anything else than 100%. With my previous laptop, the whole graphics system failed. For some reason, about every fifth reinstallation worked (based on pure luck), then the first kernel update fucked it up again. So that “everything just works” is unfortunately not universal, it depends on your setup.

I had a diferent issue with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on a 2022 Thinkpad. Most of the time it would only detect my external DP 4K monitor as 30Hz instead of 60Hz so I had to unplug and replug it repeatedly until it would finally default to 60Hz while this never ever happens on Window with same monitor and same laptop.

And no, I couldn't just manually set it to 60Hz because that option wasn't detected and wasn't available until I would replugged it multiple times for it to be detected, and then lost again the next time I would replug or resume from sleep.

Linux is good, but God help you if you fall through the net of Linux HW compatibility quirks.

I'm trying Fedora as my 3rd distro after pop os and mint right now, and scaling is a constant issue on 4k+1080 secondary, while on Windows it just works straight away after display drivers are installed

I once built a PC that would blue screen Windows 7 within the first 10 minutes. Reinstalled multiple times from different installation media including a retail pressed disc. Nada. Same result. Windows Vista though ran fine. Ubuntu fine. Later Windows 8, fine. Just 7. Why? Who knows.

As much as I like Linux on server, sleep on lid close is still a hit or miss. Even worse, for a standard user there is no sane way to solve sleep/wake issues on Linux. Does it work on my most of my ThinkPads? Yes. Will it work on another device? I honestly could not say.

I tried Ubuntu on my Mac - but the fonts were rendered so bad I couldn’t even continue. Why in a retina display they aren’t as sharp as MacOS?

It's insane how bad your product can get with no repercussions once you achieve 90 some % market share.

It is even more insane how competition can't take advantage of it.

NO!

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