I agree, nowadays Linux seems like the only reliable solution. Even macOS, with the latest "liquid glass" update, feels like a toy for kids.
I just wish the Affinity suite would be available for Linux too.
I just wish the Affinity suite would be available for Linux too.
(Agree that Liquid Glass is miserable, though.)
Just want out of the box 4k hdr 120hz vrr and 5.1 surround sound over hdmi on nvidia gpu, it can boot straight into steam for all I care. Performance should not be worse than windows.
Is this possible? Install and it just works out of the box; of course games will have to be compiled for this... but if this becomes a major market.... then games will support it.
I would LOVE this.
Would be drop in OS replacement for my dedicated windows gaming PC on LG OLED tv. ps: These things are amazing for gaming due to fast pixel response times. Great for couch co-op!
Once you realize that the dedicated app is basically just a browser shell, using a real browser becomes somewhat of a no brainer.
Edge even supports PWAs on linux which can give you the "app" experience without the app.
The Office-in-browser experience is laggy and slow and long-learnt familiarities are gone.
Additional old-man whinge: Outlook keeps wanting to open in a browser window now. I have enough things open in a browser that are difficult enough to manage that I don't need Outlook getting lost in that forest as well. It's convenient having a separate Taskbar icon that will definitely open my Calendar or Email.
When everything's a browser tab, what's the point of the taskbar?
When everything's a browser tab then the browser is the Operating System.
Every day I'm forced to use Microsoft at work, I'm increasingly glad I ditched it at home.
Especially non-tech people. Look at how popular Ubuntu VMs are with research chemists. And successful chemists tend to be highly technical.
> Look at how popular Ubuntu VMs are with research chemists.
Are they? I actually have no idea.
> And successful chemists tend to be highly technical.
But not necessarily in any IT sense. STEM skills are very specific.
Sorry, it looks like I’m just being petulant and saying “I’m not sure” about your every sentence, haha, that wasn’t my intent but it is what I ended up doing I guess.
I'm going to dig into this a little. This feels like shifting responsibility onto the user when things don't go well. E.g. comparing the platonic ideal of Linux when analyzing practical options. I make lots of mistakes in all aspects of my life. I know historically, and projecting into the future that I will get into trouble with Linux, so I don't daily-drive it. Yes, there are always ways to fix things when a system gets in a bad state, but there is a time and effort cost to this.
Saying it's my fault for breaking it doesn't help restore the system. e.g. "Should have used the LTS release", "Should have only installed software from the package manager", "Shouldn't have used sudo", "Shouldn't have edited a system file without knowing what you're doing". If I was doing those things, it probably seemed like the best of available options, e.g. the only way to make a certain piece of hardware or software work.
But somebody must be responsible for making your computer work, who should it be?
The companies that sell operating systems don’t seem to be fulfilling the obligation to make a bug free and user-friendly OS. The Open Source community never really had accepting that responsibility as a “business model” because they aren’t businesses.
In Windows or Darwin you are not responsible, because you can't tell the computer what you want to do, but in a free OS, you can and do order what the computer is doing and that's why you also need to deal with the consequences.
I instead buy a pencil from a different brand. It doesn't come in the color I want, but it's good enough, and lets me focus on the drawing. The pencil engineers and enthusiasts keep telling me the customizable mechanical pencil is much better. They love it, have learned its intricacies, and take pride in this.
Buy a newly announced Windows laptop with a new CPU model. Try Ubuntu, you're day is about to suck.
[1]: "Break" here meaning "behaves in a way I don't want"
I am switching to Linux for both my desktop and laptop from here on out.
I just don’t want to be sidetracked by overly aggressive and pushy decisions by my OS vendor anymore. I’ve been happy with the stability of my Debian/Ubuntu systems for getting work done. I have been using apple laptops for 10+ years, and I still like their build quality, but I don’t like the direction macOS (or Windows) is heading.
Linux has its own idiosyncrasies, which may or may not make it worth. E.g. ABI diaspora, installing things can be inconsistent and high-effort, the cycle of copy+pasting CLI commands and system file edits from old forum posts or these days LLMs to fix something, treating your PC like a multi-user system that has an admin by default, etc. My general experience is that installation and things work smoothly with the built-in or package-managed software, but gradually degrade as you start installing software and drivers.
I think I have the opposite orientation: In the past when family and friends needed help to install/rescue their machine (on Windows versions that supported it) I always ensured there was a separate "Manager" admin login and then made their main account "limited", albeit with UAC popups.
If nothing else, it made repeat visits much easier.
Spotlight got a major update in macOS 26 where it can now perform actions. I can open spotlight and type "run <enter> <some terminal command or script>" and get the output right there, selecting it will put the resulting text into my current window.
16:16 up 23:27, 1 user, load averages: 1.72 1.78 1.90
Spotlight is also context aware... Say I run across some text in another language:
Spiegami come funziona questo coso.
I'm not a fan of all the UI choices that have been made, but those will get ironed out over time. Meanwhile, I get some more powerful out of the box features without needing to resort to 3rd party apps.
I wish unserious complaining like this wasn't mixed with actual technical criticism of software.
Big Sur is, somehow, the exact opposite. Corners are rounded off as if they could hurt someone, and margins are padded more than a cell in solitary confinement. Space is wasted everywhere. It's Fischer-Price design philosophy and I'm hardly the only one to point it out.
In a side-by-side, so much screen real estate gets wasted that it's genuinely disgusting: https://www.andrewdenty.com/blog/assets/img/macos-new-ui/fin...
Just feels like I’m using an iPad now.
Here’s a fun exercise. Look at how huge the window borders are to achieve that insane corner radius. The cursor changes to the resize arrow at the corner before it even touches the window, the bottom arrow is a good 4-5px away from the window lol.
Sure, that's a reasonable technical criticism. Wasted screen space is, in my opinion, an issue in modern interface design trends. Good design uses space in a thoughtful manner. The designers of macOS clearly don't agree with us, but we can have a reasonable technical discussion about that. We can consult the data. We can consult the users.
> It's Fischer-Price design philosophy
You're mixing the two again. Fisher-Price was not consulted in the design of modern macOS interfaces, and complaining about not liking the design language cheapens all your actual points. No real discussion can be had around this taste garbage. You're rage baiting.
What is the intent of dumbing-down the Mac design language? iOS superfans already have devices to use, the Mac has to compete in the professional segment of the market, not the casual one. The only motivation I can see is to enforce solidarity with VisionOS, which by most accounts seems to be a professional flop too. An ecosystem shouldn't aim for superficial similarity across devices, each experience should enforce their unique strengths/weaknesses in the UI and then network their state to each-other in the background. Apple used to know this.