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Comment by PaulDavisThe1st | Hacker News Reader

There are Linux distros that meet your description (no need for WSL2 either!). I am guessing you're not running towards them with open arms and cheque book in hand ... or maybe you already ran to Linux and are just nostalgic about going back to Microsoft ... ?

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Linux UIs can’t even align fonts correctly within the elements.

It is miles away from the original and you can immediately see its Linux because things don’t quite line up. Huge difference in quality, attention to detail, and the entire interface becomes unpleasant to look at.

Also, Linux power management and lack of hibernation means its useless on laptops

Out of curiosity, when was the last time you used Linux on a laptop platform? Anecdotally, it's come a long way since 5 years ago - daily driving Ubuntu 24.04 on my Thinkpad, and I can get 8 hours of use (engineering workload) in a day. It's not ARM level of performance, but far from "useless".

That's "It works on my machine". Especially with ThinkPads, Dell XPS, and other laptops usually used by the Linux folks. Try it on a random cheap HP and you might not even have sound working (I've gone through this a few months ago). You can sometimes easily fix it through the terminal, but then we get into the debate of whether a normal user would be able to do that.

Well, how many "it works on my machine" does it take to make it a general statement? It works on all of my machines, from dirt-cheap lenovo EDU series ThinkPad to portable workstation Dell M6800 and Pixel Chromebook in between.

It generally doesn't work for people buying computers from vendors who use hardware were the manufacturer doesn't disclose the documentation. Just don't give money to those who seek to prevent free software.

I mean, yeah? But it’s far from the seamless experience of macOS or windows. On my desktop pc:

- My wireless card isn’t detected

- I’m using Linux mint, which means I’m still on X11. Some software doesn’t support X as well as wayland. Some only supports X I guess?

- I use Davinci resolve - which has a native Linux install. But I need to use some weird tool to convert it to a dpkg to install and run it. It doesn’t have a window bar - so the only way I can change the size of the window is by right clicking in the task bar

- My two monitors have different DPI - so I need to use window scaling. This confuses IntelliJ - which made all the text super tiny for some reason. I have a DPI override for that in a weird Java config file.

- I want consistent copy / paste shortcuts. I can’t use ctrl+C in terminal because that’s SIGINT. So I have it set to meta+C. But I can’t bind meta+C in IntelliJ because of Java limitations. So my copy/paste shortcut is just different in different apps now.

- Smooth scrolling is still an inconsistent mess between different programs. Particularly Firefox.

I’ve also been running into problems where my second monitor won’t turn on after I resume the computer from sleep. But apparently that’s a bug that affects windows as well when using recent nvidia drivers, so that isn’t Linux’s fault.

I’m not saying it’s bad. It mostly works great! I love my workstation, and I’m enjoying distancing myself from Apple’s increasingly buggy software stack. But it’s far from perfect.

I’m happy enough to use Linux despite all its warts. But when my parents ask for a new computer, I recommend macOS or windows.

> - I want consistent copy / paste shortcuts.

I really miss Sun keyboards, with dedicated copy and paste keys.

The skinny Enter key, not so much... anyone else ever set SUNKEYBOARDHACK in zsh?

Solid advice, but choosing good hw for the rig is already a challenge. Tick the virtual "linux" checkbox and you often get an empty list. That is, if you have that checkbox, in any sense. How the hell should I know if a mobo/laptop is supported? Googling "<model> linux issue" always yields hundreds of threads regardless. Even when <model> is Thinkpad: https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+thinkpad+issue

Anecdotally, it's come a long way since 5 years ago

I hear this trope for two decades now.

my Thinkpad

Are you even surprised that I'm not?

2025 is truly the Year Of The Linux Desktop.

> Also, Linux power management and lack of hibernation means its useless on laptops

I gotten better battery life under Linux than on Windows on every Thinkpad I've owned in the last 15 years or so.

That's not to say everything is smooth sailing. Audio is a battle I'll still be fighting on my deathbed in ~40 years.

Pulseaudio was not a blessing to Linux.

Overcomplicated and hard to configure, the only way it even got measurably usable is because of distro's putting in the sweat here.

However, pipewire is really great. Audio on Linux has been a lot better since pipewire became increasingly the default.

I do not know what kind of Linux UI you have seen, but the problem mentioned by you is certainly not universal.

I have never seen it, but it may exist, because there are many kinds of Linux UI that I do not use, e.g. Gnome.

That said, I have seen many Linux GUI applications that are ugly, at least by default, but many of them can be reconfigured to be beautiful enough.

I have never been content with the default appearance of any Linux distribution, but the good ones can be customized to look completely different and better than Windows, especially if you replace all default fonts with some high-quality fonts.

I don’t want to spend eons heavily customizing, only for my customizations to break down the line, though.

But you[1] are willing to spend money, so you can pay someone else to worry about that.

[1] Based on the original comment. If you personally are not willing to spend money, your reply doesn't fit the conversation.

Plenty of distros/skins get it 99% of the way there for a similar looking screenshot but only 25% of the way there for the actual user interface experience. ReactOS is probably the closest (in terms of going down a holistic user interface approach) but saying it's 25% the way there to being a finished solution would be generous.

While DEs often emulate the look of macOS or Windows, they always get the feel wrong. You can put a global menu bar, Dock, etc into KDE, but ultimately it still acts like KDE and nothing like macOS.

It's not like macOS or Windows is the pinnacle of UI. I'm on Fedora Silverblue, and it's so relaxing to not deal with the usual ['Yes', 'Not Now'] prompt on notifications. Or have your computer became suddenly unresponsive because of random scans you can't disable.

The GP is talking about the Windows 2000 UI.

It's not like kde is either. In windows I have never thought about carefully moving the cursor through start menu. In kde it's one wrong move and you're in a different section, cause in 25 or how many years they didn't figure out hover activation delay.

> In windows I have never thought about carefully moving the cursor through start menu

Well, Windows 11 got rid of start menu. To get to it you have to click an obscure button. In Windows, you have to carefully think how you move the cursor at the edges of the window because Some Idiot thought is a good idea to make the window border 1 pixel wide. Even on (Q)UHD monitors.

The internet says the borders are 1px since w10, but the actual resize handle area on my pc is much thicker and is adjustable, cause I remember changing it.

Windows surely has its quirks in dumb places. But what linux desktop achieved in the last 10-15 years is being driven by a bunch that simply shits on its users and doesn't care for years after. I left back to windows at xfce 4.6 which broke all my effing menus and told me to gfm. Kept trying biannually and seen it getting worse and worse, at the stupidest places. Like, they have to be from really special demographics to do some of that.

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