Most people who like desktop Linux seem to only want to do some narrow thing with their computer, like use Emacs for everything.
What about the Linux desktops do you find incompetent?
If you spend most of your time in a terminal or IDE you don't see the pain.
I want it to work. I want to use it. But it's just bad quality.
In context, by the time I've worked around the issues, I earn enough to just buy a Mac and use that. And everything works fine there!
Nowadays desktop Linux is pretty good, to the point that Valve uses it as the backbone for their gaming handheld. Fractional scaling is upstreamed in Qt and GTK, Pipewire is the default for Bluetooth now alongside 320kbps codecs (including AAC), and GNOME and KDE are both now stable enough on Wayland to daily-drive. I think your complaints would have been valid 10 years ago, but the hodge-podge x11 desktops are in the rearview mirror for most users.
Agreed, but there is a decent enough workaround.
Or: what do you use?
I use NixOS, these days. It shares a lot of similarities with Silverblue, except it relies on the Nix package manager instead of the RPM one. It's not "the least trouble" by a long-shot, but it has a lot of great built-in tooling that makes developing multiple projects with different packages a breeze. Where other people might use a VM or Docker to isolate build dependencies, us Nix users write specifications for an environment and get a special shell with all our dependencies pre-linked. I digress, but it's a neat project in it's own right that even supports MacOS if it sounds like something you'd want. I've used it in-prod and have nothing but good things to say about it.
Apple music loads when you plug in headphones? Is that the same as your laptop doesn't suspend and resume at all?
The taskbar has things you don't like in it? Is that the same as "the UI for most apps are show stopper broken"?
If I fix the icons in my dock, they stay fixed. If I fix something in Linux, someone is going to come along and break it next time I patch something.
See the difference? I like the mac as an access device for power tools BECAUSE the kind of folks who like messing with computers aren't messing with mine.
And most of what you mention in the last paragraph needs to be prefaced with "if you don't mind burning 4x more battery on doing it without acceleration", and "if you don't mind it looking like a small child chose your fonts".
It's not enough for it to be kinda usable if you squint, it needs to use the hardware I paid for, it needs to suspend and resume and boot securely, it needs to look good, display in the colors I want on the display hardware I choose, and let me remap the keyboard without using 10 apps to cover all the weird edge cases.
That's table stakes.
I moved on from MacOS 5 years ago (after the Catalina announcement) and don't miss a thing. I also pay substantially less money for the same software with no built-in advertising at all. My news app doesn't link out to Taboola, my music app doesn't ask me to subscribe or buy albums, my Docker doesn't rely on a VM. You have to drag me back kicking and screaming to Windows or MacOS, because they're both bad operating systems nowadays. Neither one of them is a better choice than the other, you're either stuck with Pinky or dealing with The Brain. I choose neither.
Perhaps I added fixes or did configuration tweaks when I originally set up the system and I just forgot and those are keeping those items you mentioned from bothering me. I think on this current box that was 6 years ago and has required nothing since and just reliably runs.
My monitor has audio out, which I plug into speakers... both have their own volume, but I'd rather use keyboard controls, but I can't, OSX disables volume control completely.
Also, you can't have a window span monitors. It only appears on the monitor that has >50%.
Links opened from non browsers open in the window physically closest to the opening app (ish). If you run chrome with multiple profiles, you can't just expect the most recently used window to open the link, you must position the window with the profile you want to use overlapping the other browser, often requiring me to drag a window fully to the other monitor (because windows can't span monitors).
OSX is the worst window manager ever created. There are states you can get into with your mouse that you can't reverse without a obscure key combo. Window snapping took how long, and it's still the worst. you can't make a window be as big as it can be without making it full screen.
It's just the worst.
I've been told I can fix all of these things... if I buy 10 different $10 apps.
Oh Apple software and hardware is so secure... Bruh, your entire dev env unless you're developing in xcode is literally a supply chain attack waiting to happen. And at the same time it is hard to make work and breaks randomly with OS updates or bottle updates or just after a restart with no apparent reason.
Please... Fractional scaling is (allegedly) not working... Big deal, even if it was true (it's not https://i.imgur.com/wm84JxU.png)...
Sure it does. Some apps require a workaround (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/HiDPI) but most of the time you can set it in the DE and forget about it.
If you're in Wayland you get the same output rescaling option as MacOS. (Which still requires some workarounds for apps - you'll see a few problems on a 1080p screen regardless of the system)
> suspend/resume on the whole platform is Russian roulette
It's better than windows these days and you can actually disable periodic auto resume unlike on MacOS.
> sound over BT is terrible
This has been solved since pipewire. Linux effectively has the best, most customisable and lowest latency audio system today. It's definitely better than MacOS which will force you into mono low quality if any app queries the microphone.
> And everything works fine there!
It's ok if you prefer it, but the list of issues on a MacOS is long and often ignored upstream. It's not even close to "everything". (I've got a trivially reproducible system crash bug report open for over a year now)
[0] https://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/
[1] https://rogueamoeba.com/support/knowledgebase/?showArticle=A...
I’m really not a fan of the “usual subjects” in the Linux desktop world (e.g. Gnome, KDE Plasma, etc…XFCE is decent), but step beyond that into the tiling Window Manager world and the user/developer experience is IMO leaps and bounds beyond any other desktop.
I tried it on a stock Lenovo T14 gen 3 and a new Intel 14500 crate with both integrated graphics and a 4060 and a Lenovo T495s. The issues were persistent across all three machines.
Can you imagine a typical dumb end user hitting one of these problems and you telling them: "buy a new computer". Hell no. The damn software should work properly.
Then a couple of months down the road I do it again, because it randomly breaks after an update, while on top of that fonts look worse and somehow the UI is even less consistent than Gnome's. How the hell does one even achieve that after so many breaking changes to GTK...
My desktop is EXWM (Emacs) witch offer at login an org-mode live dashboards of anything I frequently need, a "desktop" in my own hand able to collect any kind of information I want. Keybindings are my control and quick launchers of various functionalities not apps, meaning a quick key to open a new mail compose buffer, no need to fire up some app up-front, another to search&narrow between my notes, the most flexible taxonomy who contain anything, files and executable links (elisp: sexps). Long story short a free tiling desktop I can bend to my needs.
Modern desktops are the aftermath of widget-based GUIs, limited and limiting tools who can't be flexible so try to be generic and users have to adapt to them instead of the contrary. No matter how well you do the modern design, it's still users who adapt to it instead of the desktop designed by any users according do his/her own needs and desire. The overall OS it's the same, in a classic desktop, let's say a LispM, anything is a function you can combine and use everywhere, if you have maxima (CAS) installed you can solve an ode inside a mail compose buffer, simply because your fully-integrated environment have that functionality, you can type and preview LaTeX etc. Modern GUIs have tried to mimic that and blatantly fail. Microsoft OLE are probably the biggest integration effort, still a fail due to the lack of substantial integration and widgets based design. Apple have tried the absurd of "integrating GUIs in the desktop" with top menu and Finder, another fail. Now most tend to WebUIs, witch are DocUIs but still not in user hands to be simply integrated and bent. So again another failure with "composed" WebApps that keep failing and still not enough flexibility.
That's why after 50+ years we "tech savvy users" keep learning the Unix CLI, Emacs, LaTeX and so on, because essentially no modern tool could work better or with less effort.
YMMV but these are also poor solutions to the problem that no one has the time, money, motivation or competence to do better.
LaTeX is a daily one for me. It would be beneficial for society that someone writes a word processor from scratch that does better. I used TechWriter back in the 90s it it was better than both LaTeX and word.
One part well taken in older desktops are the idea of DocUIs, editable and end-user programmable, of course I'll not use today a LispM or a Xerox Alto, my EXWM still boot on modern GNU/Linux (NixOS) because I need to interact with today world, I can't live like RMS with an obsolete laptop (much a craptop even if open) etc, but still with these old tools because they outshine modern ones.
I casually use R and I like some of it's aspects, since it's a casual usage while inside EXWM and living in org-mode I've chosen R-Studio for that, it's not "anything ready and perfect" but the point remain. Why the hell wasting gazillion of time to create slides if I can simply present from a zoomed org-mode buffer? Why wasting my life with a spreadsheet if I can do the same with few SLoC in an org-babel block or in R Studio UI? Why became sick formatting docs with an office automation package when I can export/write directly LaTeX and change pretty anything without re-touching my text?