20 years of Linux on the Desktop (part 2)
ploum.net
ploum.net
Having used Windows for more than a decade before that I thought let's give Linux a try. After a year I uninstalled the Windows and stayed with Linux. Now, 6 years later I am still extremely happy.
In my workshop I have all major operating systems and where 10 years ago Linux was the thing you had to constantly fix, this has now changed — in fact there are constantly things not working (or at least changing without notice) on Windows and Mac.
KDE as a desktop is just amazing and beats even MacOS in many places. Hardware support has become mostly a non-issue (I'd still advice to check beforehand tho). Some things like Audio routing (pipewire) are downright amazing. You want Youtube to output audio via HDMI while outputting VLC audio via bluetooth and something else via the headphone output? You want to run your microphone through your DAW before going into Zoom? You can do just that by patching some wires.
Edit: Linux on the Desktop has become better (and is still doing so), meanwhile I am not 100% convinced Windows and MacOS aren't in fact getting worse.
Windows screams that its license is invalid and requires a reinstall.
There's nothing quite like listening to music with Airpods on my iPhone, then switching to listen to music on my Mac while I'm Airdrop-ing photos from my phone to it, then hopping on to my walking treadmill and immediately switching to listening to the Mac Studio while having iPhone Monitoring on, etc.
Also for certain things - especially for creative work - the Mac is just hard-to-beat. Drivers for audio equipment, and VSTs for DAWs work well and without issue on the Mac; it's quite a struggle to set them up on the Linux, and there's always latency issues or manual config to deal with.
Like my phone because I want more!!!!