It’s worth acknowledging the real challenges raised in this thread: desktop Linux still has rough edges for some use cases, hardware support isn’t always perfect, and niche professional software may lack native support or require workarounds. But these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations so much as ecosystem and investment gaps, areas where community projects, standards efforts, and wider adoption could drive improvement without sacrificing freedom.
Viewed through the lens of digital autonomy and citizenship, the question isn’t simply “Is Linux perfect?” but rather: Do we want our fundamental computing environment to be ultimately under our control, or controlled by private interests with their own incentives?
> Viewed through the lens of digital autonomy and citizenship, the question isn’t simply “Is Linux perfect?” but rather: Do we want our fundamental computing environment to be ultimately under our control, or controlled by private interests with their own incentives?
As a user of Linux as my main desktop OS for more than 20 years, a user of Linux far longer than that, and a promoter of FOSS before that was a term, this has always been the question. Most of the world does not care. I suspect that is more true today than ever before. There are now adults that grew up in the age of social media that have no idea how local computing works.
Not to be negative but the "obstacles" to adopting Linux were never actually obstacles most of the time. Fifteen years ago my mother started using Linux as her main OS with no training. I gave her the login information, but never had a chance to show her how to use it, and she just figured it out on her own. Everything just worked, including exchanging MS Office documents for work.
> Most of the world does not care. I suspect that is more true today than ever before. There are now adults that grew up in the age of social media that have no idea how local computing works.
Yep. I was amazed when I was talking to a friend who's a bit younger (late 20s) and told him about a fangame you could just download from a website (Dr Robotnik's Ring Racers, for the record) and he was skeptical and concerned at the idea of just downloading and running an executable from somewhere on the internet.
I suspect most adults these days are like this; their computing experience is limited to the web browser and large official corporate-run software repositories e.g. app stores and Steam. Which ironically means they would do just fine on Linux, but there's also no incentive for them to switch off Windows/MacOS.
To them, Microsoft and Apple having control of their files and automatically backing up their home directory to Azure/iCloud is a feature, not a problem.
To be fair, downloading and running random executables from the internet is a genuinely terrible security model when the OS (like Windows, Linux, or (to a lesser extent) MacOS) does nothing to prevent it from doing anything you can do.
I think Arduino and RPi demonstrate that there is still a relatively strong attraction for tinkering. In the past, freedom meant a lot to tinkerers. My sense is that this is not so true today. Perhaps I am wrong. It may be that few people respect licensing enough to care. As long as somebody (not necessarily the producer) has made a youtube video of how to hack something, that's good enough.
This was probably always true. Replace youtube with Byte magazine and it was probably the same 45 years ago. I wonder if the percentage of true FOSS adherents has changed much. It would be a bit of a paradox if the percent of FOSS software has exploded and the percent of FOSS adherents has declined.
Note: I mean "adherent" to mean something different than "user".
> I think Arduino and RPi demonstrate that there is still a relatively strong attraction for tinkering
Raspberry Pi is an interesting example because it is constantly criticized by people who complain about the closed source blobs, the non-open schematics, and other choices that don’t appease the purists.
Yet it does a great job at letting users do what they want to do with it, which is get to using it. It’s more accessible than the open counterparts, more available, has more guides, and has more accessories.
The situation has a lot of parallels to why people use Windows instead of seeking alternatives: It’s accessible, easy, and they can focus on doing what they want with the computer.
I don't think tinkering is the dominant culture behind tech anymore, but it's definitely operating at a higher scale than ever before. There's more OSS projects than ever, and there are tons of niche areas with entire communities. Examples could include: LoRa radios (or LoRA adaptors!), 3d printing, FPGA hacking, new games for retro hardware...
> There are now adults that grew up in the age of social media that have no idea how local computing works.
Very few people of any age understood how local computing (or any computing) works. There's probably more now since most of the world is connected.
Profit scale has reached a point where commercial OS creators have to do stuff like shove ads into the UI. There's probably more legitimate need from non-developers to use Linux now than ever before, just to get a better base-line user experience.
You are right. Most will never care. I think of it like, lets try to keep the lights on for the folks that inevitably get burned and need an escape hatch. Many will not, but always some will. At least that's my way of not being a techno-nihilist.
> They like it given a chance. My daughters for example far prefer Linux to Windows.
The two topics are orthogonal. GP talks about "local computing" vs. "black box in the cloud", the difference between running it vs. using it. You're talking about various options to run locally, the difference between running it this way or that way.
Linux or Windows users will understand basic computing concepts like files and a file system structure, processes, basic networking. Many modern phone "app" users just know what the app and device shows them, and that's not much. Modern computing hides every bit of useful knowledge from the user. They get nothing beyond what service the provider wants them to consume.
Desktop Windows still has rough edges. Desktop MacOS still has rough edges. Desktop Linux still has rough edges. Pick your poison.
Niche professional software may lack native Windows support or require workarounds.
Windows has a strong grip in enterprise environments where it is desirable to remove desktop control from users.
You have things like FreeIPA and Samba making weak offers beyond directory services in that direction. You have things like OpenTofu and Ansible making partial efforts in that direction. But you don't have an integrated goto standard solution for giving Linux desktop control to the enterprise. So Windows continues its grip in the enterprise. (If I'm wrong, please post a correction here. I'll be grateful for the education.)
For companies less obsessed with taking control away from users, Windows has less of a grip.
I think you are thinking about it way too hard. Windows 11 is a dog. Constant hardware problems, slow, and frustrating UX. Is any desktop linux perfect? No, but its better than w11 right now.
No hardware problems in the version I run, not sure what version you use. It's also not frustrating for me but what I do get frustrated with is trying to get software to run and Linux but just won't work. Most people are smart enough to be able to use windows without getting frustrated.
As a Windows user since 3.x days, I complain mostly about UX issues these days. It's also clear leadership is not aligned with what I want with my desktop.
I've hardly had hardware issues since I moved to Windows 2000. Sure some, but few enough I can't recall any in particular.
The problem I see with most people is that it just doesn't occur to them that there are alternatives. They're so used to a shitty experience with Windows and MS apps, and to them there's no such thing as os" and "hardware", in their minds they're lumped together.
So they shrug, say "meh, computers, I just can't understand them," and go on their merry way rebooting Windows for the 10th time that day.
Now, don't get me wrong, Windows has improved a lot from a robustness standpoint. Moreover, most people only use computers that come pre-configured, either from the factory or by their IT department. They won't face the crazy shit I have to put up with when I manually reinstall mine. Half the things on my 5 yo HP Elitebook don't work out of the box and I need to install a bunch of drivers from HP with dubious names, like sp1234 which makes the touchpad work, and sp4321 which enables the webcam. After a further set of updates, I can use my external screen connected to the intel integrated gpu and finally try to get some work done. Good times.
Frustrating UX? Nope. Slow? Nope. Constant hardware problems? Just no.
I've already switched to Linux, but this was not at all my experience of Windows. The only reason I switched was because Windows is going towards an "AI" focused OS which I do not want, as well as the cost of the Pro version - I run many VMs and not shelling out for Pro for all of them.
MS Office is hardly "niche professional software." I hate it, and recognize that I can use the online services, but the reality is that I have to send, receive, and work in this application and I can't easily do it on Linux.
If you're working in a corporate environment, this may not be viable. LibreOffice is great software, but it's not 100% compatible. Things may look slightly different, get lost or otherwise cause problems. I've really tried, but at the end of the day I occasionally do need to use actual Microsoft Office.
Yep. And then there is Visio which gets used a lot where I work. LibreOffice Draw doesn't come anywhere near it. It saves a lot of grief just to give our Linux users a Windows VM with Office on it if they need to do any significant docs or drawings.
I used Word to write a reasonably complicated document that necessarily used tables. It was one of the most frustrating, bug inducing experiences of my life. I had to open the document and edit it in LibreOffice to get any sort of stability.
How do I join a live editing session of an Excel file with several people using regular Excel with LibreOffice?
I can't.
Or the same with PowerPoint.
I can't.
In a modern workspace it's not just local software running solely on just your local machine emailing around files or clobbering changes in some corporate file share.
I suspect the person you are responding to wasn't including everything that doesn't work on Linux, in particular Microsoft Office, in this phrase, but domain specific / specialized business software.
> But these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations so much as ecosystem and investment gaps
For people who are trying to get their work done now, in the present, this doesn’t change anything. We all know that Linux could technically run the same productivity apps and games if every company put enough investment money toward it. However even some of the apps I use which had a Linux version have announced that they’re sunsetting Linux compatibility due to low demand.
For all of the people whose work lives inside of text editors, web browsers, and terminals switching to Linux is easy. I think these threads become biased toward people who fit that description who don’t understand why everyone can’t just switch over.
> Viewed through the lens of digital autonomy and citizenship, the question isn’t simply “Is Linux perfect?” but rather:
That feels like a strawman argument. Most people don’t choose their OS on ideological grounds. The reasons people don’t use Linux isn’t because it’s not “perfect”. People use Windows because it works, it’s familiar, and their software runs on it. All of these calls to make OS choice about ideological wars isn’t convincing or even relevant to people who haven’t already switched to Linux.
This is an clarifying perspective. In particular, I think this sheds light on understanding the various perspectives in the thread:
> Viewed through the lens of digital autonomy and citizenship, the question isn’t simply “Is Linux perfect?” but rather: Do we want our fundamental computing environment to be ultimately under our control, or controlled by private interests with their own incentives?
We make choices, become passionate about some, and wear values we feel strongly about on our shoulder. What we witness here, I believe, is a conflation of two things:
A: Linux as a value: Representing open source software, rejecting bad corporate behavior, and as a philosophy for software ownership
B: Linux as a collection of related operating systems, as practical software.
I think trying to understand each person's perspective, and if it can be categorized as one or the other makes sense of this article, similar ones, and discussion. Someone in Category B evaluating operating systems as tools should not be viewed by someone in Category A as an affront to their identity. It may just be different use cases; different hardware; different priorities; different variants and versions of operating systems used.
Yes but the headwinds of Linux adoption are (to some extent) that Linux is the best choice for A, but it is not far and away the best choice for B (not saying it’s bad or even worse than Windows, it’s just not CLEARLY better).
But when you approach 99% of the population who, to the extent they’ve even thought about it, will only judge an OS on B, Linux is just one of 3 main choices (sorry BSD folks. Don’t yell at me). Is it the best choice purely on functionality and app ecosystem? Maybe, but also maybe not.
Since the majority of Linux does not come on hardware by default what you’re essentially asking people to do is to buy a car and swap out the motor. We have to convince them why that new motor is better and is worth the effort of doing so. If it’s marginally better or worse, it just won’t be worth the headache to most people.
To be clear Linux (and MacOS) are my preferred OS. I haven’t owned a Windows box in at least 5 years.
Some desktop versions of GNU/Linux have rough edges. Self-important grognards think everyone should "git gud" and install Arch or waste a weekend waiting for Gentoo to compile in order to optimize the install. This article along with this one (https://www.theverge.com/tech/858910/linux-diary-gaming-desk...) go on about using an Arch-based distro rather than a Debian-based distro.
Clearly there will be challenges, minor or major.
The failure of these articles is the authors aren't going for distros that "just work". Want to undercut Microsoft's user base, grow GNU/Linux, and herald the year of Linux on desktop that's been promised for decades? Keep it simple.
Majority of people going online with their computers are browsing the web, doomscrolling, and engaging on social media. They're not pentesting with Rust, running an instance of a LLM, or setting up a webserver for giggles.
Keep it simple.
But pushing Arch and other beardy distros with these kinds of articles reeks of gatekeeping as if only "smart" people are allowed to engage online and control their experience. Everyone else should suck it up with Microsoft having Copilot phone home since they don't deserve to know better. And I don't care how much preamble they give about Debian-based and beginner distros, they're just wagging their dicks to easily-awed proles and relishing imagined egoboos from other neo-Stallmans.
It isn't an issue with Linux, it's an issue with the companies that make proprietary software and devices with only windows support. A better world is possible, but you need to accept the fight isn't easy. Switch today.
My personal pet peeve is the GTK/Qt divide. Theming has an extra step, as you have to pick a matching theme for the other toolkit apps you inevitably end up using.
KDE/Qt has excellent scaling support, but GTK apps (OrcaSlicer for example) end up having blurry text or messed up text labels if you run a non-integer scaling resolution.
The Wayland transition almost seems akin to the IPv6 debacle. Support is there, but it’s half-baked in half the cases. I crave RDP remote access, but this is currently not possible with KRDP as it does not work with Wayland sessions. Wine is just getting there, but only with scary messages that say that it’s an experimental feature.
> My personal pet peeve is the GTK/Qt divide. Theming has an extra step, as you have to pick a matching theme for the other toolkit apps you inevitably end up using.
Is this perhaps an issue of fractional scaling? I’ve run Openbox/Blackbox on Linux for ~15 years and never had these issues. Not 100% sure I understand the issue at least.
Things look mostly fine (to me) and even if they don’t, the apps still work as they should (no blur). AFAIK Openbox/X11 just uses the DPI the monitor reports and things scale as they should.
Sounds like an issue with Gnome/KDE to me, not with Linux?
I may be wrong, I’m not seeking a super polished look or want to tweak my UIs a lot.
> Do we want our fundamental computing environment to be ultimately under our control, or controlled by private interests with their own incentives?
The reality is a lot more nuanced than that. Should one live in a forest, devoid of any city services and company of other individuals, so that one may be under "own control"? This is the essential value proposition with Linux and it's no wonder many prefer the comforting institution of proprietary prisons^Wsystems.
Not everything that runs on windows is proprietary I use a lot of open source software on Windows myself. Windows is also a lot easier to configure to run exactly the way I wanted to run and to be the OS I need it to be. It's extremely customizable and easy to control. It's also modifiable in many many more ways.
Nobody cares about what runs under the hood (I mean the real market, not the dozen of us nerds), as long as it looks and plays nice. Market already uses linux both in the form of android but also as a server OS. For both of these the financial incentive was there for someone to write the drivers, make the UI user friendly (android users never have to open a terminal), create sales channels.
Desktop and laptop market is weird because no hardware vendor wants to compete with MS. The only one who does (apple), owns both the hardware and software as well as sales channels, so they are not affected by MS’s deals.
Yeah but folks around here like to stick their heads in the sand when reminded that this is a very real and concerning barrier to adoption of desktop Linux. It could happen 1000 times and they’ll still scream that it’s either user error or even worse “it works on my machine”.
Until the Linux community stops pretending and accepts that these are real issues and they need addressing, it will never be the year of the Linux desktop.
> But these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations so much as ecosystem and investment gaps, areas where community projects, standards efforts, and wider adoption could drive improvement without sacrificing freedom.
Are you sure? My second-hand thinkpad still won't hibernate properly. It's not a weird model, it's a ryzen-based X13 Gen1 so not even shiny new. You can imagine on a laptop one would want hibernation to just work.
The fault is surely on Lenovo's table... Yet it would work if I was to run Windows (which I don't want to do).
So yeah... Now I have a laptop from a brand which is known and appreciated for linux compatibility, and a basic thing like hibernation does not work.
> You can imagine on a laptop one would want hibernation to just work.
Well, I think MS took care of that by removing the hibernation option from the start menu. You have to manually turn it back on from the old control panel.
I'll be glad if someone tells that I'm wrong but doesn't current windows 11 present even more of the same challenges? Last I tried, old driver compatibility in newer windowses was not fantastic, Wine slowly is becoming more compatible with legacy windows programs than the windows itself, forced updates are dealbreaker for many usecases. And need for workaroubds and poking around has reached Windows XP levels.
I mean, there are two ways to make Linux better alternative than Windows, and currently the main effort is coming from Microsoft...
I switched to Bluefin, which is a branch of Universal Blue, which is flavour of Fedora. Sounds complicated, but in fact is the best thing to ever happen to Linux. I get all the ease of use of something like macOS but pre-built with tools for development like distrobox, and then I can just build my dev environments and get shit done in no time, without having to worry about breaking updates or nuking the whole file system because my bash sucks.
Its Linux for babies, and it makes me happy.
=====
Further ass-kissing:
Also I forgot to mention I tried gaming on it via Steam and it works like a charm... Not so sure about bleeding edge AAA games since I don't play any of that, but at least for all my oldies it works just fine.
Oh!, and the one thing I miss is Affinity Designer.
> Oh!, and the one thing I miss is Affinity Designer.
While I haven't experimented with it that much yet, Affinity (the new one, the one after the Canva acquisition) does work in Wine 10.20.
Now, I won't say it is a smooth experience, one of the workarounds that I needed to do is use Wine's virtual desktop so Affinity's tooltips are rendered correctly instead of being pure black, and the GUI does seem to not render correctly sometimes (it renders as white until something causes a redraw).
This makes you wonder: How hard it could be for a business that already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch the application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle the application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux support"?
Wine has some gaping holes in some of its API implementations. Direct2D, for instance, has existed since Windows 7 but is badly implemented in Wine -- there is no antialiasing and the ArcTo() function draws a line. The MS documentation is not that great either, so fixing Wine isn't necessarily easier than porting to native.
> How hard it could be for a business that already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch the application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle the application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux support"?
First 80% of a job typically takes 80% of the allocated time. The last 20% of a job typically takes another 80% of the allocated time.
> This makes you wonder: How hard it could be for a business that already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch the application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle the application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux support"?
CodeWeavers (developers of CrossOver and one of the main contributors and sponsors of Wine and related tools) actually offer something like this as a paid service for companies called PortJump:
Getting it running in linux is the easiest part dev wise.
It is the rest of the iceberg that causes problems.
- You need your support to be able to support linux which means they will need training and experience helping people in an entirely new system
- Linux comes in finite but vastly more combinations than OSX and Windows which means you are probably going to need to pick something like Ubuntu or struggle with the above
>- Linux comes in finite but vastly more combinations than OSX and Windows which means you are probably going to need to pick something like Ubuntu or struggle with the above
This is easily solvable by distributing the app via a distro agnostic mechanism, like as a Flatpak or AppImage. Using Flatpak also eliminates the need for rolling their own app update mechanism.
But most of those issues are because Linux doesn't have enough market share. No one brushes off Windows because they need to support Windows and they need to add CI/CD for Windows.
The combination issue is a real issue though that (as far as I know) is mostly solved with Flatpaks, or in case of games, by using the Steam Runtime.
Of course, it is a "chicken and egg" problem of "we don't want to support Linux because there aren't enough users using it" but "we don't want to use Linux because there aren't enough business supporting it".
Thankfully with improvements in Wine the need of having "native" Linux support is shrinking, but at the same time there is still a looooong way to go (like the issues I said before with Affinity).
Yeah, I thought that Affinity would work pretty well in Wine because I've seen a lot of people pointing to the "just follow the guide (AffinityOnLinux repo) and it will work!" but in my experience it didn't work that well as people were saying.
And the guide itself seems to be outdated, the guide says that you need to install some stubs/shims but doesn't say that happens if you don't do it (I think that it would crash) but at least in my experience it did "work" without them when using an up-to-date Wine version.
Sadly Photoshop also doesn't work, if you want to follow the rules and use Creative Cloud it won't work at all, if you decide to sail the seven seas and download an older Photoshop version it will work but it also has some annoying bugs (sometimes the canvas doesn't update after an edit until you try to do another edit).
Don't get me wrong I do think that Wine is an amazing project and I hope that it continues to improve, but sometimes people don't seem to actually point all the issues that it exist when running an application in Wine.
> This makes you wonder: How hard it could be for a business that already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch the application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle the application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux support"?
I've had cases where running an app under wine worked better than the native linux port :/
Not that there aren't trust issues with bigger projects but don't folks worry that the further down the "branch of a flavour of of a branch of a flavour" chain they go the higher and higher the risk of someone sneaking nefarious code through becomes? I guess there's a natural barrier in that the lesser known code bases become less of a target.
Sometimes I just find it wild with how much we talk about containers and sandboxes for the user space code we run that there's still regular recommendations for the random distro of the week published by who knows who.
Bluefin, Aurora, and Bazzite are taking over my home.
I've been using desktop linux since before ubuntu, and I have never had so much confidence in my linux rigs. They are dependable, which is refreshing after boot-breaking updates have ruined my setups before.
As another anecdote in favor of Universal Blue's approach. My mother (who can't use a computer but to check email or regular websites) has been swapped to Aurora and has nothing but positive feedback.
To be fair, the people who barely use the computer are the easiest to move to Linux. As Mental Outlaw said, "to a normie, an OS is just a bootloader for Google Chrome". If all you do is check emails, it doesn't really matter what OS you have installed.
Switching to Linux hasn't been an issue for those users for a long time - it's usually gamers, users of professional software, or IT people with deeply established workflows who have troubles
I guess the only part that matters is updates, and atomic systems like Fedora Silverblue do allow you to enable automatic updates without the fear of breaking everything, which is great
Doesn't matter though. Every single one of these "casual" users I know has a terribly outdated device with a broken battery that doesn't even charge anymore.
When my dad (83) was looking to replace his ancient Win7 Dell PC I convinced him to buy a MacMini since he's had an iPad for a long time, and more recently an iPhone.
Initially he was concerned about the "new" interface after using Windows since 3.11 days, but within an hour he was happy doing his usual "basic tasks" (email, basic Excel, Word for letters, printing, etc). He was amazed both his printers (colour/scanner, b&w) worked with zero hassle after simply plugging them in.
Now he loves the ability to FaceTime anyone in the family (kids, grandkids, etc.) at the click of a button using the webcam plugged into the Mini, and really enjoys the sync of photos, emails, notes, etc.
I think he would have really struggled with Windows 11 so I was tempted by an older-person friendly Linux distro if macOS wasn't an option.
I thought about mentioning my mom, since she's been my number 1 tech support client since ever... And I was going to say that, I am so certain of how solid this distro is, that I would even install it on my mom's laptop without any hesitation.
I was originally blown away by Bazzite, which I run on my Legion Go, but then I discovered uCore (https://github.com/ublue-os/ucore) and haven't looked back! Running it on my homelab and multiple servers at work, its a wonderful server OS.
I'm currently working on converting an ARM Chromebook to run a different userland from ChromeOS and have been wondering which distro to use. I've starting getting Nix on it, but I think I'll switch over to Bluefin based on your recommendation.
I’m so close to the switch myself for silly reasons. I don’t like windows due to their creepy business practices and negative design patterns in their OS so I’m very bias against it. Forcing copilot is just the latest in their creepy practices…
For more details on why I came close to switching: I use my win desktop as a host for ai services such as Comfy UI for stable diffusion generation since it is a beefy platform; for example, I generate reference stuff for Krita (digital painting software) illustrations on my drawing tablet. I remember the process to configure windows as being strange, GUI bound (NOT windows strong suit), and just annoying due to my aforementioned bias. Valve has done great work with running games on linux which is the only reason I keep that OS and I’d rather set up services on linux.
This comment serves as a reminder to myself that I should just go ahead grab my windows license keys for archival purposes and flash a better OS on that system.
Krita is among the main reasons why I am so impressed with the KDE project. Not only do they deliver a very good desktop environment, but they also deliver some genuine flagship apps for it
I call it silly because essentially I’m complaining that I don’t like setting up a service on an OS I don’t normally set up services for. My quibbles with that process can in part be addressed by crafting a terminal based workflow to configure the host and enable the service on my desktop, skipping the GUI completely. E.g. I’m sure I can do Task Scheduler shenanigans through powershell. More experience would help sand down the rough parts I experienced.
Now the product decisions behind the OS giving me the icks… The terminal can’t (completely) help with that ^_^
Eh those applications can both be run in linux without issue.
They are likely to have more issues related to getting the drawing tablet configured correctly.
The rest is just having to start from scratch and lose the decades of windows experience and intuition which can make things painful as that type of thing cant be replaced without time.
Do you have reference for the krita+comfyui setup? I have a drawing tablet and always wanted to augment drawings using AI but never got around to deploying a stack for that. I have a 3090 that should be enough for it, I just need a reference for the setup.
Copilot is already great and it's only getting better. I can get so much more work done and the same amount of time or get the same amount of work done in a lot less time.
It's funny how many people were afraid of AI. Technophobes abound in this world
Funny, I disagree. I think copilot truly sucks compared to the other options. But you can uninstall copilot, so I don’t see why it bothers people at all.
Having just yesterday installed a fresh Mint distro on a newly received PC that came with Windows pre-installed, I can tell you that this is merely an hour of work, and most of the time will be spent downloading and burning the .iso on the USB key.
Yep, once I read microsoft was going to integrate that abomination co-pilot into the taskbar and desktop in general, I wiped my windows partition for good. I didn't even back anything up. I have fedora servers at work, but I just need a stable and performant OS at home to do some remote work, hobby coding, and connect to some telescope equipment. So I just run Ubuntu LTS - why? because I don't need to spend my time nerding out on ricing a linux distro, I have better things to do with my time. The same goes for Windows, I have better things to do than try to get an operating system to work - and there lies the big rub. Linux is easy enough now for anyone who is decent at windows to learn and use, and it's free, upgradable, tons of support available, and WORKS BETTER.
As I'm typing this, on my work windows PC, the taskbar icons aren't rendering. Generally the graphics are slow, Microsoft outlook randomly freezes my entire computer, and occasionally my USB drives turn on/off if I'm plugged into a docking station. I experience exactly zero of these issues when running
In 2012 I borked my Windows 7 install by messing with the registry. I then used an Ubuntu live disk to back up my data. Then I reinstalled Windows 7, but when I couldn't access the internet because I hadn't installed the ethernet driver I had a thought: 'that Ubuntu thing didn't need me to install an ethernet driver to access the internet'. So I decided to install Ubuntu instead and I've been using GNU/Linux exclusively since then. I switched away from Ubuntu when the Amazon lens controversy happened and eventually wound up bouncing between Arch and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
Everyone is talking about moving to Linux lately, it’s a bit of a trend. I wish they’d stop, for one simple reason: I’ve been using Linux exclusively (when I’m not forced to use macOS by work) for several years now, and I rather enjoy the lack of malware, spyware and other bullshit on the platform.
If the general public comes over this situation might end. Desktop linux isn’t a target right now because its niche, I’d prefer that didn’t stop.
While I sympathize with this angle, there's another side to this coin: if more people do the switch, maybe some applications will finally get linux versions.
I'm a Sunday photographer and quite like Lightroom and Photoshop (I know about the drama, but to me, I get enough value from them compared to Darktable and the GIMP to not switch just yet). It's the only reason I still have a windows pc hanging around the house.
I am in a similar boat; my media editing machine ruined windows 10 so that I can use Lightroom. But I would dearly love to ditch windows so I'm currently looking to try out running Lightroom under Winapps to see if it is usable. There's no way of passing the GPU through without something like SR-IOV so I'll have to see how it goes.
I was thinking of doing that, but since that would require me to switch the monitor and whatnot, it would be just like using two PCs. And since I only use my desktop for LR and not much else, jumping through the hoops with emulation doesn't make much sense.
There's a lot of servers running Linux that are regularly targeted by malware.
There is a big difference in what software a desktop user runs versus what runs on a server, but the great thing about Linux is that you can keep just as much variation between your install and the average desktop user.
Your best bet for security is probably running OpenBSD, but within Linux, if you avoid common optional applications and services like Gnome, KDE, pulseaudio, systemd, etc., you'll have a significantly different attack vector. Avoiding Python and Node package managers and sticking to your distribution's package manager would be great, too.
I bought a thinkpad X1 carbon refurbished for about ~$300. I wanted to travel abroad with a laptop I wouldn't mind getting stolen if it happened. During the installation of Win11 it asked me to create a microsoft account, fuck that. I installed linux mint. Very nice experience overall, so nice to not get assaulted by ads in the start menu. Pleased to see the nightlight functionality (I googled f.lux for linux and that's how I discovered it) is built-in, and with flatpack I installed vlc, qbittorrent and obsidian. Firefox setup was straightforward. And that was it. This is a laptop for youtube and movies, I used the pre-installed libre office calc for small budget things and list making. It just worked for me.
The things that bother me about this laptop are primarily hardware related coming from using a mac laptop (which is the laptop I would mind getting stolen). Trackpad on X1 carbon is definitely not as good, battery life not as good. And opening the lid momentarily reveals what you were on before the lock screen comes on. This last one tastes more like a software issue. I had another issue with the hdmi port being finicky, but that's hardware again.
Overall very happy with this setup, linux mint is in great shape. I do wish there were fewer distro choices for people considering making the switch. It does introduce choice paralysis. I had to set aside my ego and pipe dream aspirations of being a "hacker" and went with a distro that seemed to be simple and straightforward to setup. Mint definitely is easier to install than windows, hands down, no need to create a microsoft account and you don't have to deal with all the slop features it tries to shove down your throat.
These articles... I'm not sure who are the target audience, because I am definitely not and I don't know anyone who is.
Specific OS is not the important, anything with modern KDE is good enough to replace Windows 10/11.
But do I (and all my colleagues) need Microsoft Office (Word, Excel at least) and/or Drawing software (Adobe or something) and/or god forbid Visual Studio 2026, and some other corporate software to make a living? Inevitably yes.
I have a Mac laptop, a Linux workstation, and a Windows workstation for different purposes and I use them all. I agree. Every time someone says they switched OSes and they don’t miss anything, it’s revealed that 90-100% of their work was in generic outlets like the web browser, terminal, e-mail, and Slack.
To be fair, that could cover a lot of people.
In my experience watching people make the switch in the real world, the failure point is either the last 10% of software that they actually need, or the first time they encounter some Linux quirk that they didn’t expect. Then it reaches a point where there isn’t really any upside for people who aren’t ideologically motivated and who don’t get triggered by Windows 11 design choices or occasional pop-ups.
I have some specific engineering software that must run on Windows, period. I’ve gotten flak from the software engineers at every company whenever it’s discovered that my second machine is Windows, but outside of software devs nobody else questions it. Using Windows for work is perfectly understood by most other disciplines
Windows pop-ups can all be turned off. I have them all turned off on my machines and nothing pops up anymore. Windows is extremely customizable and modifiable and it runs 100% of Windows software which is most of the software being produced in the world today.
The only reason I'm not using Linux on my work-provided computer is due to the security software. None of it runs on Linux, it only runs on Windows and MacOS. Glad I don't have to use any software that only runs on Windows to do development. Hopefully the security software will someday support Linux.
Target audience is probably especially anyone not in the US?
It is beginning to look a lot like war is brewing between Europe and the US over Greenland. US media working super hard to make an "acquisition" sound reasonable and "FreedomTM".
If and that is a big if, Trump were to get Greenland, there is not much that Europe can do in any case. Maybe a few politicians will go on X/twitter and complain but every country in the EU knows that they are no match for the US military and I am saying that as someone who lives in the EU.
I suppose the EU could go after big US tech companies but since most of Europe's needs are covered by the very same companies, I don't think this would be viable solution either and let's be honest the EU people are not just going to switch to Ubuntu tomorrow morning.
> If and that is a big if, Trump were to get Greenland, there is not much that Europe can do in any case.
Whether or not that's true, that doesn't mean they won't try anyway. Pride sometimes beats pragmatism. I think it's foolish to dismiss the possibility of war, been if you believe it will be one-sided.
The EU can just kick out the US bases and forbid Mastercard and Visa working here. ASML? Good luck for Intel; I'm sure AMD would have its asses already covered and found some alternative in Asia.
Watch the Dow Jones collape in minutes.
On GAFAM, there are alternatives, and libre software it's libre for the whole world, not just the US.
Software it's easily replaceable except for die hard industrial DOS (where FreeDOS experts would cover) and some special XP/w9x era machinery. European hardware, the industrial one... there's no alternative in the US. No one.
If the US army steps on Greenland in order to seize it, it's the end of the American economy.
China and Russia? These two should watch the Bering currents and South Asian quakes first; the upcoming ones will be a nightmare due to ice meltings.
You assume that this is not the goal of the current US "leadership". They want the country to fail, so they can rule over the ashes. They are a lot more fucked up in the head than you probably think they are. They simply don't care what happens, so long as they are the ones in power.
Trump would love nothing more than to dissolve NATO, and isolate from all of the EU. He would see that as an accomplishment. I wish I were joking.
I love you guys, and I wish you were right, but I don't think you are.
Any of the above moves (military bases, Visa/MC, ASML, etc) would make the US suffer, but it would collapse the EU. Europe has a decade or two of hard work and crippling costs to significantly disengage from the US, and no one has the vision or fortitude to make that happen.
You also wouldn't have any security. If you disengage from the US militarily (whatever's left of "NATO"), we'll all see how far Russia can project power. Not as far as they'd like, but enough to make life miserable in a half-dozen or more current-NATO countries. Which puts pressure on their neighbors of course. This would be a shooting war in the east, which would require central and western European countries to decide whether they want to spend blood and treasure to respond. "No" kicks the can down the road a few years, "Yes" is economically devastating.
China could step in! It's a long way from China to the Mediterranean and North Atlantic, and their naval power is ... thin, currently. But you don't want China to step in. They could send money, but then they'd own you worse than the US even fever dreams about owning you.
The US seizing Greenland would be a terrible thing for the world, but I think the most likely outcome is that there would be complaints from the EU countries at highest level and volume, and a handful of countries would get legislation through to make the US suffer, but it would fail at the EU level, maybe even split the EU into two factions of American-bully-reluctantly-aligned countries vs American-bully-righteously-andor-selfservingly-opposed countries. The instability would last a few years, maybe a decade, and then we'd be back to where we are now, with "Greenland (US)" replacing "Greenland (DK)" on maps, but otherwise no one would spend much time thinking about it.
And the stomach-turning irony is that all of this is completely unnecessary. The US has a compact of free operation in Greenland already, including military operations. This is just an exercise in establishing dominance (i.e. The End of Politeness). There are some administrative details like mineral rights and redrawing international exclusivity zones (watch out Canada), but those are not very important when the global economic machine is working properly.
The rhetoric here in the US is that RU and CN are waiting to pounce on Greenland already, and that if we don't, they will. I honestly don't know if there's even a shred of truth to that -- it sounds like absolute manufactured BS to me (RU isn't strong enough to hold it, and CN can't project at that distance), but I have a strong anti-trusting bias against liars who lie, and those are the people dominating the conversation on this side.
The next ten months in the US will decide the next fifty years of the world. On a personal level, that's the rest of my life, and I'm worried about it.
I wish wisdom, resilience, and peace, for all of us.
> Any of the above moves (military bases, Visa/MC, ASML, etc) would make the US suffer, but it would collapse the EU
And many other places - most countries depend in US tech and increasingly so (recent NH stories about Vietnam mandating banks only use unrooted mobile phones). Just card payments not working would be an economic disaster. So would closing down all the businesses and services that rely on AWS, GCP and Azure. So would whatever the US chose to do through Apple, MS, and Google OSes.
> we'll all see how far Russia can project power. Not as far as they'd like, but enough to make life miserable in a half-dozen or more current-NATO countries. Which puts pressure on their neighbors of course. This would be a shooting war in the east, which would require central and western European countries to decide whether they want to spend blood and treasure to respond
I am more optimistic than you about this. Russia is struggling just against Ukraine. They might just invade the Baltic states but anything more would force Western Europe to commit and the Russians know this. Even in Ukraine they invaded because we had signalled we would do nothing by not responding to the previous invasion of Ukraine, to threats to invade and previous Russian invasions of other countries.
> The rhetoric here in the US is that RU and CN are waiting to pounce on Greenland already, and that if we don't, they will. I honestly don't know if there's even a shred of truth to that - RU isn't strong enough to hold it, and CN can't project at that distance
If Greenland becomes independent in a few years time would it then become more of a threat?
> RU isn't strong enough to hold it, and CN can't project at that distance
China is building its armed forces, and there are ways of getting a country within your sphere if influence short of invasion.
> I wish wisdom, resilience, and peace, for all of us.
We all do but I think we are living in a new cold war.
> This is just an exercise in establishing dominance (i.e. The End of Politeness).
I agree.
It's a way to assert dominance and the EU countries are partially responsible for the state of things.
I mean, when you outsource your manufacturing capabilities to China, your tech services to the US and your security to NATO, then it frees up a lot of cash to spend on other things and that is probably why life in the EU is pretty good.
Unfortunately the other side of this coin is that it leaves you completely unprepared if/when things change quickly.
> Europe has a decade or two of hard work and crippling costs
Once again unfortunately, many EU countries are already maxing out their budgets each year and running sky high deficits so there is not much dry powder to absorb these costs.
Raising more money through taxes is politically unpalatable when a lot of the EU countries are already in the top 10 of most taxed countries on the planet.
The only notable exceptions are Poland and Germany but they won't be able to carry the rest of the EU by themselves.
> maybe even split the EU into two factions of American-bully-reluctantly-aligned countries vs American-bully-righteously-andor-selfservingly-opposed countries.
The smallest EU countries have no choice. There is no EU army and therefore if the US leaves there is no one to replace it. It's a basic case of choosing the best worst outcome. Become a vassal of Russia or become a vassal of the US.
Again, Russia would need to fight harsh natural disasters first. If any, they will need us. Earthquakes due to ice melts and current flows will be no joke. Temperatures will be warmer in the Arctic, and a potential small war due to gas/resources/routes will happen, everyone knows that. But what no one speaks it's that the damn nature can crush any vehicle in between no matter if it's from USA, Europe, Russia or China.
It will be scary and nature doesn't give a shit where are you from.
Every base you set on either ice or the coast can be plummeted down due to a quake/tsunami in hours.
Also, back to economics. The inner European market can be huge. We have decent armies ourservers, too, among market with the whole Mediterranean, Africa and South America (Spaniards know how to do deals, no matter which political side). Oh, and don't forget China, the Chinese will love to sell us advanced tech at bargain price.
The US tries to set right wing sided mafias in LatAm, Europe tries to get good deals. The US needs to behave like gentlemen and not like thugs.
> The EU can just kick out the US bases and forbid Mastercard and Visa working here. ASML? Good luck for Intel; I'm sure AMD would have its asses already covered and found some alternative in Asia.
The EU uses Mastercard and Visa. If youblock them in the EU, you just cripple the EU economy instantly.
> On GAFAM, there are alternatives, and libre software it's libre for the whole world, not just the US.
How many people do you know that would be willing to switch to an alternative OS tomorrow or give up their Iphones?
> If the US army steps on Greenland
The US army is already on Greenland. They have a military base there.
I agree with you in spirit but in reality any countermeasures would inflict a lot of pain the EU as well. I don't think anyone has a crystal ball but whatever happens won't be good for anyone.
Yeah, I think it is naive of the grandparent to believe that iPhones, Android phones with Google Play Services, a lot of cloud services can be replaced overnight. That said, it might not happen overnight, but it will surely happen.
I feel like we are close to a tipping point where governments and companies will move off US services en masse as fast as they reasonably can. I think this movement already started. E.g. our local university has forbidden use of US (well, any non-EU) LLMs for work and are trialing Mistral. Two years ago they would have gone Gemini without thinking (since they are already using Google Workspace). They are also extending support for their Linux workspace, which has primarily been maintained for CS'y groups, but they want to be ready to roll it out when needed.
A lot of organizations (especially non-profits, universities, etc.) have woken up when Microsoft relinquished Microsoft 365 access of the ICC chief prosecutor overnight.
I guess one side effect of the US going rogue is open source getting a lot more traction.
I hope that the EU (and UK) will also invest heavily in iOS and Google Android alternatives, because that will be the hardest bits to replace, but as long as AOSP still exists it will be possible to bootstrap reasonably quickly.
Its going to be a very long time before it changes enough to do without US tech. How many European governments are encouraging the use of apps that only run on iOS and Android? How many critically important businesses like banks require customers run unrooted Android or IOS? HSBC's app will not even work if you install apps from F-Droid!
A few governments are trying to do something about reliance on the US, but they are also doing things that create greater reliance.
Its good your university is trying, but that sounds like a limited response. Do they use Windows? MS Teams? Google Drive?
I know of no government making serious attempts to get the private sector of US dependence. Just check how many things you use regularly run on AWS. Desktop Linux is great but is any governmentactually making consistent attempts to persuade businesses to switch to it?
Its going to be a very long time before it changes enough to do without US tech. How many European governments are encouraging the use of apps that only run on iOS and Android? How many critically important businesses like banks require customers run unrooted Android or IOS? HSBC's app will not even work if you install apps from F-Droid!
Step by step. For example, most Dutch banking apps work fine on GrapheneOS. Yes, still with Google Play Services, but at least they are sandboxed. It shows that there is a path to removing dependence incrementally. There are also a bunch of European phone brands (yes, most manufactured in China), like Nothing, Fairphone, Gigaset, HMD, etc. and at least one of them already supports alternative Android versions. Yes, I know they have issues, but you need to start somewhere.
Its good your university is trying, but that sounds like a limited response. Do they use Windows? MS Teams? Google Drive?
Yes, but they also have an official Linux workplace, last time I was there, you could choose to re-image a machine to run Linux on every machine. They are also trialing ownCloud.
The migration won't happen overnight, but it's good that they are setting up the alternatives, trialing them with small user groups, etc. It's the best way to prepare yourself.
I know of no government making serious attempts to get the private sector of US dependence. Just check how many things you use regularly run on AWS. Desktop Linux is great but is any government actually making consistent attempts to persuade businesses to switch to it?
I agree, not enough persuasion is done. But being gloomy is not going to help. Best is to trust in our own strength (we can do it), accept that the solutions are going to be worse (at least initially), make people aware of the risks and alternatives.
The whole situation sucks, but big changes also give rise to big opportunities and it is an opportunity to change to a more open, more privacy-friendly, more user-oriented, etc. ecosystem.
I see this argument again and again, but I would imagine most people reading this have separate work and home computers?
For the average home user I can see gaming - while hugely improved in recent years - could still be a showstopper.
But surely for the average user Libreoffice or online versions of MS Office will suffice? Surely there cannot be _that_ many average PC users that need the full power of Photoshop?
Of course I expect the average HN user to be quite different from the average user in general, but I really do think that many casual users get no advantages from Windows apart from familiarity.
Maybe Windows should remain as a professional tool for using these applications. Most people don't need them. They need a web browser and not much else. Maybe some games for kids. Something like Ubuntu can serve those needs just fine. If you need VS for developing Windows apps, then you obviously stay on Windows.
Yeah, but I guess part of the point is that MS themselves have been moving their desktop stack to the cloud making it even better for Linux users to maintain some degree of interoperability between the two OSs. I never particularly liked the Libre alternatives to Office, but now with 365 I can keep up with my colleges stack without having to switch to a VM or some other artifact just to collaborate on a document.
Drawing, yeah, true... design as well... closest the Linux world ever was to get something decent in the design department was the Serif/Affinity products, but they never made the port.
I guess it depends on your field, for the past ten years I've worked in companies that use Google workspace, google docs, google drive, etc, etc, and slack.
I've not had any lock-in to Microsoft software and I don't think I've deal with a .doc file in all that time. I need a terminal to run devops stuff, and emacs to write it with, but almost nothing else.
Artists, and so on, are probably tied to Adobe, etc. But random developers and sysadmins are certainly capable of switching I think.
While office can run in the browser, the browser version sucks and I commonly need to open the files in the desktop version. This often happens when there's a browser version or a mobile version or an app version. There's a lack of feature parity.
The browser versions (and the mobile versions) are nowhere near parity with the desktop Windows version, even in quite basic matters of styling. To be honest this annoyed me enough in the end that I just moved to a PandaDoc/CSS/PDF workflow and honestly I now have both a simpler editing process, and a more powerful engine for customisation.
The browser versions aren't as good as the desktop versions. And Googles alternatives aren't as good as Microsofts. Both do 60% of the job, which is probably enough for 80% of the people.
I'm currently developing ASP.Net Core services and modern .Net is quite nice. Everyone around me uses absolutely free Visual Studio Community edition, so it would be weird to not use it.
You're making the exact same argument everyone here is making, and that's because you're attempting to argue from technical parity / superiority. Windows isn't the dominant desktop OS because of it's technical superiority to Linux, it's dominant because of deeply entrenched compliance and industry reasons.
Healthcare, finance, legal, engineering (less so today, but still very sub-discipline dependant), and government all have very specific software needs that no one in their right mind will bother writing new software, or rewriting existing software, would do for 6% desktop market share.
EMR programs (Epic, Cerner, Meditech), Practice management and billing, Tax and compliance, Legal discovery and case-management tools, Niche hardware and it's control software
This is all the realm of Windows. Most of these applications are Windows-only (Win32 / .NET / ActiveX legacy), they're only certified and validated on Windows, and they're only contractually supported on Windows.
Even if Wolters-Kluwer rewrote the entire CCH ProSystem fx suite for Linux, now there's recertification, regulatory review, vendor retraining, staff retraining, potential issues with auditors and regulators, etc.
There's currently no upside large enough to justify: Vendor finger-pointing, Compliance risk, Training costs, Downtime risk
It's negative ROI all the way down.
Windows has to become so bad that switching to Linux for desktops overcomes all of the above.
Every now and then a new article "Why you should go Linux". I get it, I like Linux too but every case is different. I want to use Linux but I have to use Digital Audio Workstation. So in my case, I shouldn't dump Windows (and thousand of $$ I've spent on audio software).
I know people desperately want to believe that Linux is "there", but it really isn't. And will probably never be. It’s still too confusing for the average user (many distros, many desktop environments, Wayland vs X, systemd vs init, snap vs flatpak).
> It’s still too confusing for the average user (many distros, many desktop environments, Wayland vs X, systemd vs init, snap vs flatpak).
Users don't need to know about any of that, except for picking a distro and just using whatever is there.
Regarding DAW - I get sticking with Windows if you have thousands invested in it. Even so, there's quite a bit of professional software out there with native support (like Bitwig) or flawless Wine support.
I'm fairly proficient when it comes to Windows, but the diversity in install methods for Fedora threw me for a loop, too. It seemed easier at first -- get all your software from trusted sources in the default package manager, just like an app store! But then there's the question of RPM vs. Snap vs. Flatpak vs. downloading an installer from their website, some versions being further behind than others, the method you use having implications for where/how programs are installed and maintained, etc. It adds cognitive friction and makes troubleshooting harder; I'm not even sure if there's a reliable way to see a list of all programs installed on your machine (regardless of method) or how to easily uninstall them. I don't regret switching, but it is an obstacle, and more consistently than the initial question of which distro to use.
They absolutely do, the moment you have any problem you are on your own. I spent half a day troubleshooting why nvidia drivers were not loading (mint was not signing them and secure boot silently kicked the module out), and I'm many times more proficient at technology than an average person.
I bought a brand new Dell laptop with Windows 11 25H2 at the end of November 2025. The first patches released by Microsoft in December did not install. WTF!!!
If you go online, you will see a whole YouTube videos and articles on how to fix the issue. Let me tell you, after a considerable amount of time, I gave up.
I'm running Ubuntu 24.04 on my desktop, and I can't remember the last time I had issues applying patches.
Windows has problems all the time. There is widespread knowledge on how to troubleshoot and fix these problems.
Similar problems will have very different solutions for Linux. The knowledge of how to resolve them is much less widespread. I’ve had very good success in asking ChatGPT how to resolve Linux issues, probably better success then I would on Windows because the error messages on Linux are much more detailed.
A lot of the time the "solution" to problems on Windows is to reinstall/in-place upgrade because, as you said, Windows errors tend to be more generic so you can browse Google all you want but none of the instructions people provide will be of much help. So I'm not sure "widespread knowledge" is a point in favor of Windows when the errors frequently aren't specific enough to be reliably actionable.
Windows has a "check the Internet for solutions" option that never works. You can just let Claude code loose on your system and have it go fix your shit for you instead of copy and pasting anything.
Reaper is just as good as FL Studio or Logic Pro. VSTs are really your biggest hurdle. Depending on how they are compiled, they may rely on platform specific code. Most big plugin makers have VSTs for all platforms though and your license works on all.
The pathway is there should you choose, one day. Linux is quite good now. That being said, I know a lot of niche plugins that some guy wrote that only works on windows because that’s all he/she has access to. Some 8-bit synth bitcrushers come to mind.
Also Steinburg made VST 3 sdk open source so you have a path to a free music production studio.
"as good as" (debatable in the first place) isn't enough justification to switch. Everyone has their own workflows, settings etc that they used over many years, which they are not going to give up, just to "switch to Linux". This is about real loss in productivity.
Yes but readers may be reading and think that Linux isn’t capable. It is. There’s plenty of DAWs available. You can also use WINE with proton to run FL Studio on Linux. My suggestion is just that, a suggestion to explore the possible.
If we just learn one thing and never change then we wind up being left behind. While FL Studio and Logic, Cubase and Ableton are what most people know. There’s ways of running ALL of them on Linux.
> While FL Studio and Logic, Cubase and Ableton are what most people know. There’s ways of running ALL of them on Linux.
As I just managed to get VR working with HP Reverb G2 in my Linux environment, quite literally the only reason I have Windows still installed on my computer is because of Ableton, and not being able to run that properly on even workstation hardware.
How exactly do I get Ableton running with an external USB soundcard and everything running exactly like it runs on Linux? I'm quite literally ready to give you money if you manage to give me an answer that actually leads to me being able to run Ableton on Arch Linux, because for years I have tried, and waited for the moment it's possible. So please do tell, how do I get it running?
This doesn't work like everyone makes it out to. The first problem is overcoming the plethora of build errors. Then if you're lucky enough to actually get Ableton launched and working, you'll run into weird issues like Ableton crashing as soon as you attempt to add a MIDI track. When you find a work-around for that, you then run into random crashing in the middle of playback with absolutely atrocious latency despite the claims of "low latency". It's not worth it. I gave up
You can't, I've tried. The "passthrough" is bullshit, it doesn't fucking work and I wish people would stop recommending this time wasting "advice". That's not even the main issue as 90% of your VSTs will probably not work either and latency will be through the roof.
I've tried to passthrough Behringer audio interface, as well as HX Stomp (to, of course, avoid dual-boot) and it stuttered like crazy. Maybe there is a way to make it more "realtime" but it's not the default, at least in VirtualBox.
And that is unfortunately the place where I spent my big bucks.
I do however use Linux for my work, and have for more than a decade. If all the plugins (plus FL Studio, I've tried Reaper but it might be not for me) worked, I'd switch my personal desktop in a heartbeat. It's honestly the only thing locking me to Win10. Maybe I'll try a Mac through work (we get to keep the machines).
And yes, I've tried running FL using Wine, and it works surprisingly well! Just not _well enough_, and some plugins do not work at all. Most do, and that's great, but not enough for me at least.
I still remember the first time I stumbled across Logic Pro X. For the price of $200 I got a complete package that contains about 200 plugins and instruments. The DAW itself was maybe 7% of the full contents of that package.
That is unbeatable value for money in the DAW market and that was before Logic Pro 11 came out and added a ton of new plugins.
It's not the apps, it's the drivers. I've got expensive high quality audio hardware (RME Fireface 800) that doesn't have Linux drivers. Oh sure, I could invest $2000 to get a newer version, but that would just mean a steep learning curve to get drivers, hardware, and DAW working anywhere near as seamlessly as my Windows setup.
It's not that I'm a Windows fan, I'm just looking for the most cost- and time-effective solutions. I'd rather spend my time recording and making music than sweating over driver and software issues.
I am a linux user for 26 years. And used windows since 3.11 up to 2005. After that point I just helped people with windows, never worked with it.
I had this friend while my kid went to school with his kid, he was a musician.
He absolutely was frightened of even handling me the mouse of his windows 7 setup in case I break his DAW, cherry audio tools and midi mixers just by me showing him a website.
Also helped to switch some dlls (hi didn't know how to kill background task to release dll to be replaced) and edit windows registry cause he needed an upgrade for some pirated software.
I have seen many more nightmarish stuff hapenning in windows, even on holy sacred windows xp.
On the other hand my mother has been using debian xfce in her acer touch screen laptop for 15 years. No issues. Many elder people got in shock when windows 8 made all those changes.
So whenever windows users talk about linux confusion I smirk.
> So in my case, I shouldn't dump Windows (and thousand of $$ I've spent on audio software).
If you mean that there's no Linux replacement for Digital Audio Workstation, then I agree: switching is not for you. But if what worries you are the $$ you have spent, you are just another victim of the sunk cost fallacy. The earlier you realize your mistake, the earlier you are ready to evaluate the options without biases.
most interesting part is to guess how many here complaining about a poor ecosystem on Linux audio, actually work professionally on the field
Surge-XT, Vitalium and/or PlugData or Cardinal can get you so far on the synthesis world that maybe not even a full dedicated lifetime can explore everything you can do with it... Ardour isn't a shinning pot for MIDI editor generational features but if you actually know music-theory, it works pretty solid for writing. the in-line editor makes very much sense, just like sheet music can hold an orchestra info. on a sigle page
Ableton + Serum + many custom VSTs user here. You're spot on. This is actually the biggest reason I can't switch. In fact Steve Duda (creator of Serum) has said many times that he doesn't ever plan to support Linux. That's not a deal-breaker necessarily, but the fact we paid lots of money for this stuff makes it a bit unreasonable to switch to Linux.
I have Windows only audio and 3d software. I ended up with a windows VM with GPU passthrough on Linux. It sits on its own m2 drive for the rare occasion I need to dual boot. So Windows has been become legacy software for me. (IClone and CC).
And Steam Deck is there.
But I think the desktop interface is legacy for anyone under the age of 25, I get a kick out of watching them navigate a desktop.
I guess it depends on your needs. 90% of my working life is a terminal to run terraform, emacs to write code, and slack to chat with colleagues. In each of the companies I've worked over the past 10 years I've had a google workspace account, and I think I've never even touched microsoft office in all that time.
Yes there are options. In practice you pick one distro, the one your friend recommends, or that the IT department gives you.
There are probably fields in which you cannot use Linux software, but for your average joe? It's not impossible, and it's not that confusing with a little patience.
I did the same for my media centers! Netflix and iQIYI refuse to work. I am cancelling Netflix. Been a member since 2010. I don't need 4k either. The 4k tax is losing ownership over your media. HDMI is closed source compared to display port.
My media center experience is so so much better. The apps on roku logout randomly, the nvidia shield remote craps out, windows firefox/chrome are slow and the logitech keyboard doesn't work. But the same keyboard and browser setup works like a charm on the same machine on linux.
Manufactured waste, fight against general purpose computing and ownership is what is at stake.
You're all too generous. The first time Netflix didn't display past 720p in Firefox, I immediately cancelled my subscription (which was paying for the whole family) and redirected everyone to Bitsearch[0] to pirate everything instead. I don't agree the moral or ethical arguments against it either.
[0] Bitsearch uses a distributed hash table (DHT)[1] to find all public tracker content
If you must, Windows 11 Enterprise IoT LTSC is where the goodness is at. Less bloat, no ads, a frozen feature set (so they won't move your cheese every 6 months), 10 years of official support and security updates... it's like it's 1997 again! And you can install tools like Classic Shell (with its superior Start menu) to make it even better.
> I don't understand people who use anything else, to be honest.
Most people don't make their coffee in an Aeropress either.
I've also used Linux exclusively (in my case 25 years), but I also realize that with a few niche exceptions, there are few mass marketed products that feature the traditional Linux desktop as their primary UI.
Desktop OS UI is hard. It takes investment in technology, product, and marketing all focused on a target market. Even with all of those most upstarts have failed to gain traction. Also consider that most people buy laptops for 2 reasons: 1) browsing the web and if they can afford it 2) as a fashion accessory. People will put up with a lot of BS from a product if they feel like the product gives them social status and acceptance.
No Linux laptop really hits (2). Arguably only a few Windows laptops do either.
> Most people don't make their coffee in an Aeropress either.
Stupid analogy, the Linux version of that would be whatever french press you want to use. Buy your coffee ground or as beans and grind yourself, depending on preference. And for my girlfriend there's always the Starbucks equivalent (Debian stable with Gnome).
Apple would be picked by modern slaves and sold in a capsule at 100,000% markup and it only fits their machines. Windows comes with pesticides for the "benefit of the user".
I don't see how their analogy is stupid. Aeropress and french press are pretty similar from an "enthusiast coffee device" perspective. Lots of room for variability in grind size, coffee choice, and specific brewing technique with both methods.
Aeropress is a brand, one I've never heard of. It fits in the Linux ecosystem (maybe as one of the Red Hat flavors?) but as an analogy it is simplified. Linux is so much bigger than that and there's everything from LFS (grow, grind and brew with tools you've sourced and put together yourself), to Android (plain old drip machine). Reducing everything that's the Linux ecosystem to a niche brand of a specific type of coffee maker is dishonest.
I use a french press myself, and never heard of Aeropress. My machines all run Debian with DWM and I never have any problems. My non-technical girlfriend is fine on Debian and doesn't really know the difference. She did mention how fast her laptop boots though.
> I have been using Linux exclusively for twenty years now.
Ditto. I can't stand other OSs; they are constantly in my way for just the basic tasks.
> I don't understand people who use anything else, to be honest.
Anti-ditto. I would never give Linux to my parents. They're capable enough to maintain their own Windows computers, and switching them to Linux would mean that I'd have to take over all of those tasks -- because they've got other, more important things to do than to learn a new OS.
I'd agree with you if you could buy rando PC with Linux installed and working with no stupid hardware issues. People who can live in Google Docs/Office 365 web and don't have industry specific use cases will almost always be fine. But once you break out of that subset of people, tossing them a Linux machine can be kind of mean.
> Anti-ditto. I would never give Linux to my parents.
I don't know about your parents but most people (including my parents) just use a browser and some applications that are identical to their Windows versions or sufficiently similar. There isn't really anything new to learn.
One huge barrier is printing. I've been using Linux as my daily OS for a decade and I still have stupid problems with printers. I can't print from my laptop because the printer spits out unicode garbage if I try. My desktop works, but sometimes I have to reboot to get the print queue to clear.
I'm sure most people feel the opposite way. I've been using Windows and Macs for 20 years and I don't ever see myself ever using Linux as a desktop OS.
Among the subculture that would be the type to visit Hacker News (or Slashdot back in the day), this attitude emerged around 25 years ago. In the late 90s, there was widespread enthusiasm for the Linux desktop. I remember those days fondly. It was glorious. Then macOS (or OS X as we called it) swept away a lot of people. A lot of them would get hostile or angry or mock people when they would mention they didn't join the Mac bandwagon.
I have multiple computers with multiple operating systems, but I still need my gaming machine to be windows because some of my favorite games require it.
Same here. Using Linux Mint for about 15 years now. Same for various computer illiterate family members. As far as I am concerned it is significantly more pleasant to use than Windows and MacOS.
This is something I see repeated everywhere but I've been using Linux daily on all sorts of laptops for a little over 15 years and never struggled with this issue.
But during my brief period on Windows I would get issues like my colour settings changing or the behaviour of certain meta keys being switched out when I woke a sleeping laptop.
My colleagues run linux laptops and they don't struggle with this issue either. They just completely turn off their laptops anytime they want to move somewhere. That's how they trust their OS.
>> They just completely turn off their laptops anytime they want to move somewhere
Fine but that attitude isn't going to increase Linux adoption. Arch does work in this regard today but it does require some BIOS tweaks to get it to work flawlessly. Compare this to a MacBook where closing the lid always does the right thing and seems to use basically no power at all in this state. For me, I'll accept the trade-off as I don't want to use macOS (makes no sense for development imo) but some aspects of the experience are clearly superior.
At work, I got a fancy MacBook, and as much as I admire the hardware, I despise the MacOS window management. IMHO, it is broken by design, and I wonder how anybody at Apple considers this a good system. There is still a small chance that I didn't understand a crucial concept, but until now, nobody was able to explain to me, how it is supposed to work.
I have reached the point where I believe that it must be something historical, like Steve wrote it himself, or else, and now nobody dares to reform it.
Can you understand why someone would buy a $20 Mr. Coffee coffeemaker from Walmart and not a $2000 DeLonghi Eletta Explore superautomatic espresso machine?
My last Windows was Windows 95 (or 98?). I've been exclusively using Linux for ~25 years. I use Ubuntu because I've been using it for ~20 years and have better things to do than try out different distros. My mother, my grandmother, and many of my non-computer-savvy friends also use Ubuntu. I know a Germanist who uses Debian.
It's a bit like with cars. If you know someone who really knows about cars, they'll be able to recommend a solid, simple, super cheap, practical car that will just work and give you no problems. It'll probably be something like a 2010 Toyota Aygo, which you can pick up for next to nothing on the used car market (here in Germany) and which you would never have thought of buying yourself. This is a Linux laptop. Other people who never got this insider tip that driving can be cheap and hassle-free might instead buy a new car from a German manufacturer on credit for half a gross annual salary (or even a whole one). Two years later, the car may already be in the repair shop because the engine is losing oil or because the Nanoslide/Nikasil cylinder liner coating is damaged.
With the Aygo, you can drive from A to B just as well as with any other car, and you might even have a little more fun doing so. But if you need CarPlay and heated seats, distrust things that are cheap, and love that je ne sais quoi that comes with things you've just bought for a lot of money, then this simple 2010 Aygo is not for you.
This weekend, I wrote code for a non-trivial compiler on my old everyday laptop. I didn't even buy it; I got it for free because the previous owner considered the device obsolete and unusable. Slowly, the thing is getting too old for me too, but Linux (Ubuntu) has gotten another couple of years of use out of it. Meanwhile, a friend of mine just bought a used Macbook that still cost more than I would ever spend on a new laptop because she has to write papers for her studies and thinks she needs a “good” computer for that.
I tried to leave Windows 11 for Linux - it just didn't work for me. I installed EndeavourOS onto my main gaming desktop. It worked great for a while and ran all the games I played with my friends. However, one night when I went on to play a game I ran a system update and it seemed to completely break my nvidea drivers - I tried reinstalling them and also using the open source driver. This meant I just couldn't play any games that night and was simply diagnosing linux issues.
I probably chose the wrong distro for this but I really just want the PC to work for playing games without any issues. I don't use it for anything other than playing games so for my time I just went back to Windows 10 and will use that until apps stop working.
Haha, exact same thing happened to me a couple weeks ago. You probably had the same issue as me. The driver dropped support for older cards and you had to switch to a legacy AUR package. I fixed it with some frantic googling while my friends waited a half hour. Not sure how you would know this without subscribing to some arch news feed or something. Not ideal.
That's exactly how it's supposed to work: Arch expects you to check the notes on their news section always before you update. The NVIDIA driver issue and solution was posted on Dec 20th.
I'm not saying I'm reading these regularly, just that yes it's the expected way.
I have been 'enjoying' this with Debian on a PC with a 1080Ti nvidia card, which is no longer supported by the nvidia v590 + drivers. I've had to pin to v580, but the whole "oops, I updated, rebooted and 'look ma, no high-resolution anymore'" got tired really quickly. You have my sympathies.
EndeavourOS is apparently Arch-based so I've got no useful suggestions for fixing there, sorry.
Yeah the real mistake was starting with Endeavour. I wonder just how many people are turned off by their initial Linux experience because they choose stuff like Arch, Gentoo, or some obscure variant rather than Fedora, Kubuntu or Mint. Even stuff like Bazzite is probably an odd choice for a novice - though it would have handled that failed nVidia upgrade nicely.
This is why I go the console route. I tried building a PC after being inundated with people saying it was better. Even on Windows it felt like it turned into a sys admin job that I didn’t care for. I just wanted to play some games after work.
I can't understand this reasoning. System updates obviously don't become less risky because of the OS they're updating. But going back to Win10 means having less control over when those updates happen (and much less control over, and understanding of, what is updated), and waiting much longer for them to complete.
> System updates obviously don't become less risky because of the OS they're updating
The last time I used arch, I ran an update and it broke my bootloader, meaning the next time I restarted it wouldn't boot at all.
Sure I could make a recovery USB and fix it, but at that point I was away from home, and just really needed to do the totally crazy thing of "using my computer to actually do work".
(To be clear, I didn't and I'm not recommending going back to Windows, just a more sane Linux)
Yikes. It's 2026. "Don't break the bootloader" should be table stakes for any OS distribution's update process by now. I am not a fan of Windows or macOS, but I don't even recall the last time an operating system software broke my ability to boot--maybe during the Windows 2000 days?
Yet, when you go online to refresh your memory on how to update your Linux installation, too many of the guides still say STEP 1: Back everything up because you may not be able to boot after you do this!
My point was exactly that GGP shouldn't have expected to be able to do the system update without risk.
But the usual way to install Linux nowadays is from a live boot, so you automatically have a recovery drive anyway. It's not hard to set up regular restore points with Timeshift or similar, either.
That said, I haven't had problems like what you describe in nearly 4 years.
The mistake is that you did a system update when you wanted to use the computer. Not implying that system updates should be a dangerous thing to do, but just something learnt from experience - I’ve had similar issues, especially with Nvidea drivers and kernel versions getting updated at the same time. The take away is keep the updates to when you have an hour to debug or get comfortable rolling back updates.
That's absurd. The system should be able to update itself without fear that it's going to break anything. The user should not be expected to have to set aside time to babysit an update.
Windows isn't perfect in this respect by any means, but it sure seems like it handles updates a lot better than the distros that have been mentioned in this thread; in that Windows at least takes steps to examine your hardware first and to not apply updates where it's known something has fallen out of support.
Windows also, apparently unlike these mentioned distros, maintains a Last Known Good configuration so if an update does start causing failures, it can automatically roll itself back (or, at worst, can manually be rolled back). There are some distros that do similar, particularly immutable distros; but honestly this sort of thing should be table stakes to the point that if a distro doesn't do it, it should be laughed out of the room.
There is absolutely no acceptable excuse for any operating system to break itself in an update.
I mean, you get what you signed up for. If you wanted total stability and infrequent updates then why would you use Arch? (If the answer is "I didn't know what I signed up for" then that's fair. Simply understanding the practical differences between distros is a huge hurdle.)
Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, and Mint remain great recommendations; good stability, community support, etc. (even for Ubuntu, a regular user might not actually care that much about snaps so long as everything works)
I just moved to CachyOS, (from Fedora, and earlier from Ubuntu -- I've been on Linux for a while) and I've been very, very happy. The gaming performance is legitimately better than what I was getting on Fedora, and I've just enjoyed the OS and KDE much more than Gnome Shell. I haven't had any real showstoppers with CachyOS, and it really has felt like a user-friendly version of Arch finally exists.
I think a lot of cachy performance is placebo, because Steam games use the container runtime's Debian 11 libraries, it doesn't use the native CachyOS ones at all.
I'm CPU-bound on one of the games I play, and cachy's scheduler may have made a difference for me. I was also fully on the closed-source NVIDIA drivers in Fedora, and had been totally out of the loop that that the kernel driver had been open sourced. And, cachy had me on a more recent version of the driver.
None of these things are truly unique to CachyOS, but nonetheless I do think I experienced a boost when I switched.
I've yet to have a day when CachyOS can come out of sleep: hangs at various steps and requires a hard reboot that somehow relaunches apps on login that I explicitly closed hours ago.
I had the same problem with Fedora which is part of what prompted me to switch. It works great for me in Cachy. I assume either way it was an Nvidia problem.
Not saying I'm not considering it given the current political climate, but I'm spoiled by my Macbook Air. The Thinkpad I've been issued for work costs about the same, runs hot like crazy, always has fans running, is cheap-feeling plastic, thicker, heavier, garbage touchpad, weird keyboard layout (printscreen right next to the arrow keys, what were they thinking?), mushy keys, barely serviceable display ... what do I buy if I want something as sleek and well-built and polished as Apple?
I don't think anyone will build as nice hardware as Apple anytime soon, so I think if that's your primary requirement then any other choice will be a compromise. I don't really like Apple, but it must must acknowledged that even a few basic things (the monitor turning on immediately as I open the screen, the touchpad quality, etc.) seem totally elusive to other manufacturers.
Apple's pretty imperfect, and it's sad to see that they've neglected and regressed their desktop OS, however I don't think anyone can argue that macOS is anywhere near as bad as Windows 11.
Eh. debatable. my work MBP frequently dies and the screen never turns on when i plug it in. I have to wait 15-20 minutes for it to turn on. My Linux laptop on the other hand, the screen turns immediately power or no power/just plugged in
To each his own. I liked may company issued ThinkPad so much I ended up buying one myself and I have been pushing back getting a replacement (HP Elitebook).
Some of your points are common, such as the touchpad being garbage, or that it runs hotter than an Apple Silicon MacBook Air. But most people consider ThinkPad keyboards to be way better than Apple's and while most (not all) ThinkPads have a plastic shell, they certainly don't feel cheap. Apple displays are typically really good, but ThinkPads have a lot of options, so it is hard to tell.
Your comment, especially regarding the keyboard makes me think you just love your MacBook. Why buy anything else?
Linux support is not great, but a lot of a significant part of what makes Apple great is in their hardware/software integration and they are not doing it open source. It means a MacBook without OSX is a lesser MacBook, but at least, it is not Windows 11.
ThinkPads run the gamut. Their flagship line is nice. In most regards, I enjoy my first gen X1 Nano — good keyboard, screen (even if it annoyingly requires fractional UI scaling), body feels solid despite being lightweight, soft touch plastic makes it feel nice to hold. Trackpad is just ok but the trackpoint makes for that.
It likes to spin up its fan doing the most insignificant things though (even plugging in a pedestrian 1x scaling external monitor can while idle can do it) and its battery life is somewhat abysmal. Standby time is also quite poor.
Some of these things are in theory improved by a newer CPU (Lunar Lake in particular looks decent) but sadly they discontinued the Nano. The Carbon isn’t that much bigger, but the size difference is noticeable in some circumstances.
It dual boots Windows 11 and Fedora, and I’ve played with other distros in the past. They have minor edges over each other in various ways but none offer a major concrete advantage over the others in any category (except harassment/junkware, which any distro has a major upper hand over Windows 11 in, but Windows 10 accomplishes that almost as well).
Either there’s simply a hard limit on how good this hardware can be in terms of thermals and battery life or neither Lenovo’s tuning of Windows nor any Linux distro has gone far enough in properly leveraging power management and the like.
Yeah, if you don't like the case quality of a T model Thinkpad, you are the problem ;) - fiber reinforced plastic is arguably a more suitable laptop case material than aluminum.
Nothing is quite as slick as Apple, but companies are popping up doing pretty sleek Linux-first laptops, I have a Starlabs notebook [1] and am waiting for their new Starfighter [2]...
> The Thinkpad I've been issued for work costs about the same, runs hot like crazy
I have a personal Thinkpad (Linux) and a company provided one (W11). The personal one basically never turns on the fan. The company one is hot all the time. Guess why.
As well as beautiful hardware that is a pleasure to use, Apple machines can be capable of running local models like gpt-oss-20B or Qwen Coder portably and without sweating. My 24GB M4 Mini was very cheap considering the local models it can run.
Yes hardware is great. Price per performance watt is also great. But UI sucks. Look at all then posts even macOS fans about new macOS release like the glass ones. I prefer ssh and running jobs in macOS.
Classic lenovo. Some models have FN as the most bottom left key, instead of ctrl. Gotta be the worst design decision ive ever seen. Everyone copy+pastes and finds, whoever thought that was a good idea really needs relieved of decision making power.
You've got history backwards. IBM Thinkpads did it that way 30+ years ago, when there was no consensus in the industry. Do you switch it now, and anger every lifetime Thinkpad loyalist, or keep it and annoy just the folks who switch back and forth between different vendors' laptops?
In a brief survey of laptop photos from the early 90s, IBM, Toshiba, Zenith, NEC, Packard Bell, Compaq, and Fujitsu all put Fn on the outside.
Epson, Apple, HP, Panasonic, and Sony put it as the second key.
A handful put it as the third key. Heck, one Toshiba machine had Ctrl left of A, Alt on the extreme lower-left starting out the bottom row, followed by Caps Lock and Fn and backslash and finally spacebar.
Only in the last 15-ish years have most of the Fn-Ctrl keyboards died out and the majority of the industry is now using Ctrl-Fn. Thinkpads are the last major holdout, but they didn't decide to buck the trend, the trend bucked them.
Idk, I find it easier to press control on a Thinkpad because it's closer. It being in a corner would be farer away.
Anyway, control should be (and traditionally was) where CapsLock is. Just remap it - everything is suddenly easy and ergonomic.
I really like my HP Omnibook 14 with the Ryzen AI HX 370 chip.. it's sleek, well built (so far, at least).. insane battery life.. the standby time on Linux is in weeks and the battery life when light browsing/YouTube viewing is easily 9+ hours. Even the finger print sensor finally just works. The touchpad gestures with kwin input actions are as smooth as, if not better than os x.
The only thing my work 16" MBP does better is the speakers.
edit: Updated the battery life to 9+ hours from 7+ hours based on what the battery monitor says.. I remember binge watching a couple of long movies/tv shows without ever having to plug in the laptop that day...
Maybe! But the fact that Apple also makes the operating system means the hardware/software integration can’t be beat. I’ve never used a non-Apple laptop where the trackpad worked a tenth as good as any MacBook.
Nice for experimentation, but if you want a daily driver that lasts for years: Dell Latitude (now Dell Pro), HP EliteBook or Lenovo ThinkPad. Literally laptops built to last. Will last a decade with ease. Higher segments ofcourse better than lower segments, but in general very very good if you stay away from lowest tier
Such is the cost of freedom, unfortunately. There is no free lunch. Historically, people abandoned comfort and made sacrifices for a greater social good.
I think I get what you’re hinting at. But is there a more expensive option that’s free (as in freedom) and provides an experience that the GP referred to?
And there will never be such option if we all collectively choose to perpetuate Apple's monopoly. It is us, of all people, who need to take a stance, because we have the necessary skill.
A computer (or a smartphone, basically whichever type of Turing complete Von Neumann machine you use) is your interface to the modern world, from interacting with your government to the stores you frequent and talking to the people you love to the media you consume.
So in that sense I think it does matter who is the ultimate arbiter of what it will and won't do, not only in an individual sense but a societal one. The more people switch to something they themselves control, the less power third parties have over their behavior.
My computer is my work environment and often an entertainment device. As such it affects my quality of life. It affects my mental health as well as my eye health.
Suffering can be real with a bad screen, an overheating laptop or difficult to use software.
My mental health definitely suffers if I'm forced to use software that enriches companies I dislike for good reason.
Snapdragon Elite X Gen 2 laptops are coming out as we speak. Assuming you're not doing GPU heavy work (or gaming), that's what you should be looking at. They are equal to M4 performance. Personally I'd look at the new Asus machines from CES.
That sounds like just what I want, that ought to have great battery life as well. Very promising, if someone were to build a nice light laptop around it...
This is also my problem. I am currently using my docked Macbook instead of my much more powerful desktop running Linux, even though I also want to use Linux more.
Why? Because as much as I want to get rid of my dependence on tech giants, Apple's products are just so damn good, and they Just Work^TM, especially with each other.
Having used Linux on/off for many years, I can say that it's definitely gotten better, but I am still waiting for the year of the Linux desktop. It doesn't have to be as polished as my Mac, but I'd like to at least not have to fight with Bluetooth especially, and things like the dongle for my headset not working and other issues like that.
I think we're always going to have that: there will always be That One Software that doesn't work on Linux, and you need to keep another OS around just to run it. I was able to get rid of Windows everywhere in my home except for one gaming PC, where I keep it around just for Fortnite, because of Epic's insistence on using their nasty kernel-level anti-cheat. So I keep that one machine around isolated from the rest of my network, for the sole purpose of playing one game.
I'm now in the process of un-Appleing my home too, and it's going pretty well, but I know I'll need to keep a single Mac somewhere in the corner of my garage in case I need to use Xcode to build an iOS app or something.
If you want something a bit more like a Macbook Pro, consider the HP Zbook G1A.
It's basically built like a Macbook in terms of case and screen quality, but it's based on an AMD Strix Halo chipset - mine is an AI Max Pro+ 395.
The chip design is somewhat similar to Apple Silicon in that it's one big chip with unified memory - you can get them with up to 128GB of unified ram - that thing is a beast for running local LLMs.
Since HP also sells them with Ubuntu preinstalled, Linux support is quite good, though it requires some bleeding edge packages for everything to be supported.
In my case, I have suspend and hibernate working perfectly, fingerprint reader, webcam, etc all work.
I mean, it's certainly not as seamless as an open x86 machine, but if you have an Air already you can always try Linux on it? The Fedora Asahi spin [1] supports pretty much everything on M1/M2 devices.
As a long time Linux user I started with Red Hat 7.2. Then moved on to Slackware from there to Ububtu and finally to ArchLinux.
While Linux and the user space ecosystem has come a long way there are still plenty of sharp edges and anyone planning to use Linux long term must be able to figure some issues that will inevitably happen sooner or later when some update/system upgrade happens.
Even though I consider myself fairly proficient Linux user I also gave up on Linux on laptops..life is just too short to tinker to make it work. (Power saving, suspend/resume, graphics with Optimus etc. Are still pain points)
Windows has its own sharp edges, such as the crashes the author of this article experienced.
It's hard to evaluate fairly. This author, for example is fed up with specific issues on Windows and new to Linux. He is likely be more forgiving of sharp edges on Linux, recognizing that it's normal for something unfamiliar to be more challenging. On the other hand, someone content with Windows might think of its sharp edges as just how computers are and consider every way in which Linux is merely different to be pointless aggravation.
Most publications covering Windows have a bunch of articles about how to tinker with Windows 11 to keep it from spying on you, showing ads, and forcing the use of an online account. One might argue life is also too short for that.
I feel there's also a fundamental difference in tinkering to get something working vs. tinkering to remove user-hostile features. In the first one the goals of the OS and user are aligned, in the second one not.
I’ll echo this. I keep at least one secondary machine booting Linux and periodically try moving a main one over, but the experience definitely is not yet without significant pains, depending on one’s needs.
This is not to discount the tens of thousands of hours of hard (often volunteer) work put into the ecosystem, but a substantial amount of work remains on things like battery life and UX (both for devs and more typical end users).
For example, why does getting virtualization under Fedora working require a whole stack of commands? Elsewhere, the most that’s needed is ticking a checkbox (if that). Worse, the mode of failure if you haven’t done the correct dance is unintelligible errors in e.g. GNOME Boxes that don’t even point the user in the right direction.
There’s all sorts of somewhat low hanging fruit like this that I suspect hasn’t gotten attention because it’s not particularly sexy or interesting.
I don't think I have ever had a system upgrade break my system on any Debian derived or Fedora I used. Also upgrades are not forced upon you like they are in Windows, with its dark patterns nudging you to upgrade.
I am also using GNU/Linux on laptops just fine, and the only issue is with battery life.
I think hardware-wise one needs to do some reading before buying, to check what is supported and what is not well supported. Other than that, I don't have issues. But then again I am also a strict on or off guy, who does not use things like hibernation or standby or whatever at all, so maybe I am dodging many bullets there.
For both ideological and practical reasons, I'd love to switch. If I were a desktop computing person, I'd already have done so years ago.
Alas, I exclusively use laptops - as I work a great deal while travelling.
I do not wish to have to carry around a mouse with me wherever I go with my portable computer.
If any Linux distro manages to replicate even 80% of the smoothness and functionality of a Mac trackpad experience, I'll switch. I have yet to find one, however (and yes, I've tried all the Asahi variants - they don't come close).
Here's a perfect example of this: Using a Mac trackpad on macOS, you can two-finger scroll as fast or slow as you want. If you go slow enough (you might have to "roll" your fingers instead of moving them down), you can scroll your browser pixel-by-pixel. This behavior carries through every app on the system. Scrolling basically does exactly what your fingers do.
Now, run Linux (say, Ubuntu) on that exact same hardware and try scrolling in Firefox or something. Instead of the content moving exactly as your fingers are moving, it does this weird jumpy "page up / page down" like thing as your fingers move. Even moving your fingers as slowly as you can will make the content jump to the next "page" 20 pixels down. This is not just Firefox's behavior: it carries through to every application.
Yes, there's probably some obscure GNOME configuration I need to add to fix this behavior, and if you search online you'll find forum after forum of people asking for logs and responding with "I dunno, try this." For something that should work out of the box.
Agreed. Trackpads on Windows are very good (approaching Mac quality) but on Linux it's hit and (mostly) miss. Gnome gestures are borderline unusable. Sometimes Gnome forgets how many fingers I'm using and every single finger mouse movement is suddenly a gesture, have to retry gestures to switch workspaces because the first two times it fails, etc. It becomes worse with more windows open. No back swipe gesture in Chrome, etc. Basic stuff that is annoying in every day use. Flawless mouse/touchpad support is not too much to ask.
> If any Linux distro manages to replicate even 80% of the smoothness and functionality of a Mac trackpad experience, I'll switch
I find Niri to be a great WM for trackpad use if you are amenable to a scrollable-tiling workflow. All gestures are inertial like MacOS and to my fingers they often feel snappier and more natural than their macOS equivalents. Scrolling is consistent and natural, though which apps have inertial scrolling is definitely hit-or-miss. It perfectly recognizes three and four finger gestures. PikaOS (debian-based) and CachyOS (arch-based) both offer Niri as an option if you want to give it a try.
For context, my experience is on a 4 year old thinkpad which admittedly is probably best case for driver support but is definitely not the best touchpad hardware on the market.
Thanks for the recommendation! I've been playing around with Niri for the past hour and I have to say there's a lot here that I like. I'm still going to need to figure out how to adjust the trackpad gesture sensitivity a bit (which doesn't seem especially straightforward to do) - but this is considerably more buttery than anything I've experienced before on Linux
Take this with a grain of salt, it's impossible for me to tell what you are and aren't comfortable with, but there is an alternative to using trackpads or mice at all and that's tiling window managers. You drive the OS with your keyboard. Combining this with plugins like Vimium for Chromium based browsers (or Tridactyl for Firefox) you can drive your entire OS and browser with keybindings.
As an aside, the latter also teaches you the bindings for Vim which is a nice boon if you've tried in the past and couldn't make it stick.
But again, this might not fit your use case or your preparedness to invest time and effort. I'm just saying.
fwiw... after 20 years I went back to FreeBSD from Linux. I recommend it if you like FreeBSD. [Actually, I run a hybrid where I have a stripped down Debian system and run BSD in a virtual machine, but 99% of my interaction w/ the machine is via FreeBSD.]
I don't know about the "you should too" part. I use Arch, it works fine for me but I am patient and want to use it. Realistically, I would expect the largest migration should be devs switching from mac to Linux. I don't see any reason at all to use a mac for development anymore.
Mac battery life is insane - I agree. It is very impressive what they have done. Still, I prefer my ThinkPad running Arch even though it probably has 1/2 the battery life of my Macbook.
Most people sit at their desk with the laptop plugged into the socket and use the battery for meetings or in a cafeteria. Either takes maybe an hour or two, three hours tops.
So what? Most people don't care about battery, so let's just have a crap battery? That argument would work, if Apple released a super light laptop with a tiny battery, specially made for "most people who sit at their desk".
No, people do care about battery life. That's where Macs excel. (I'm saying this as a Thinkpad user, where getting 6-8hrs of battery is doable, if you don't do anything on the laptop).
The touchpad is great, yes, I like it, too. But I'm anyway mostly using mouse and keyboard and occasionally the 3-finger-swipe which is possible with Thinkpad+Linux as well since a few years. Thinkpads are also famous for their touchpad/trackpoint if one doesn't fancy using a mouse.
i have been using macbooks for many years as that's usually the only corporate option next to thinkpad+windows. and i definitely prefer a logitech mouse.
You may not need it but no kernel support for containers / cgroups is a deal breaker for me. Windows at least makes an attempt with WSL. But, at the end of the day, most things are just about rationalizing what you want to use. I personally identify with Linux tribe, not Mac tribe therefore that is what I want to use.
I won't comment on the merits. Each person can do what they want. But, the line that caught my attention was:
> The first question often asked of Windows refugees migrating to Linux is, "Why Linux?"
The answer, realistically, is probably "What else?". Unless you're comfortable with the BSD's (which I like, and weren't mentioned), or unless you have recent Mac hardware lying around, it's the easiest and most practical alternative.
It's a bit of a duopoly, isn't it?; with a third leg that's sometimes something in the BSD camp, and sometimes in the MacOS camp.
Try CachyOS, it's based on Arch but with additional optimizations, better defaults, and is user friendly. The problems the author of the article had would not have happened if he spent some time using an user friendly distro before trying a hard distro.
Do CachyOS optimizations actually make any difference whatsoever? I know they enable certain optimization flags whenever building software, but that doesn't directly equate to performance improvements unless you're actually benchmarking and testing it. I've seen some benchmarks in games and it seems there is literally zero performance difference (sometimes it loses to Fedora, even).
I'd always recommend upstream distributions with corporate backing for novice users: Ubuntu or Fedora. If they're coming from Windows: Linux Mint. There's also a clear upgrade path for users who enjoy Mint or Ubuntu: Debian testing.
Arch Linux is awesome, don't get me wrong. I just believe it's borderline unethical to recommend someone installing anything related to Arch on their workstation. It's just not what a beginner should choose at all. CachyOS included, it even makes you choose your bootloader at install (any user-friendly distro would simply never bother you with that and go with GRUB right away).
A user's first distro can make or break their Linux experience. Think hard before recommending new users the flavor of the month or an Arch derivative.
> Do CachyOS optimizations actually make any difference whatsoever? I know they enable certain optimization flags whenever building software, but that doesn't directly equate to performance improvements unless you're actually benchmarking and testing it.
I switched from Windows 11 to Kubuntu a year ago, and then gave CachyOS a shot after hearing praise for it. I'm on a laptop with an AMD iGPU, and CachyOS's `znver4` optimized repos gave a significant bump on my Geekbench results:
(Note: these results are from almost a year ago though)
Lenovo Thinkpad P14s Gen4 AMD
- Windows 11: 2366 Single-Core Score, 10717 Multi-Core Score
I love Cachy, but please don't recommend it as a reasonable first step into Linux.
It's a lot more polished than Arch, but it's not for someone who hasn't used Linux before and wants a reliably rock solid and predictable experience 365 days a year, with no fiddling.
It's rolling release, and there are inevitably bugs when updating immediately to every minor version of every part of the OS stack. Arch/Cachy/Endeavour are for experts, and those who enjoy tinkering. (If you want to recommend something Arch-flavored, just recommend Manjaro, and don't listen to the memers who parrot some youtuber's list of ancient and silly engagement-bait grievances.)
Or Mint? Works flawlessly for me when I need a Linux, which is not so often these days, but if I was still doing cross-platform software development it's what I'd use. Minimal fuss.
Mint is one of the greatest distributions to get started with for users coming from Windows. I've been using Fedora full-time for more than four years now, but before that I used Linux Mint for about a year. It's a great, seamless experience.
Only problem I believe is the lack of customization options in Cinnamon compared to KDE and even Gnome with extensions. I guess that makes the user miss out on some of the cool parts of owning your software. Also, being stuck in X11 will start to become a problem in the next few years: I'm waiting to see what they come up with on that front.
CachyOS? That distro asking you to pick one out of 5 bootloaders and one out of 13 desktop environments? That is rolling and so comes with the implicit contract that you would have your eyeballs liking every package's release notes for any one of them that you ever update?
Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against CachyOS (I really couldn't care less), but if this is where we collectively set the bar for what is "user friendly", we are doing it wrong.
This is hilarious. Recommendations like this are exactly why nobody takes desktop Linux seriously (aside from gamers who yearn to dick-measure about something). A rolling release distro? Let alone Arch? You may as well recommend Gentoo.
Yeah, it can quickly lead to analysis paralysis.
I've set up three laptops with a Linux on them for non-tech friends and family members and deliberately went with distros that "just work" (Debian and Fedora specifically).
In general I'd recommend sticking to the simple options and not going into niches unless you/the user actually wants or needs to.
If you wanted to recommend a distro which is a bit more 'out there' (so not just the quadfecta of Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint), I'd much sooner go with Mageia or OpenSUSE than an Arch derivative.
That's what I first thought of too. The author picks CatchyOS as their first Linux distro, only to find it's more complicated to set up, and then the mouse buttons don't work.
For the Linux newcomer, the biggest advantage of Ubuntu (or Ubuntu derivatives like Mint) is the wealth of guides, tutorials, and Q&As online, allowing you to google most common problems. You can always switch to another distro once you become more confident with Linux.
Maybe don't tell beginners to use something that will so easily break because you didn't read a wiki post. CachyOS is for the kind of gamer who'd de-bloat Windows, etc. to squeeze 1 fps more out of their hardware. If this isn't you then use something else.
Linux doesn't have all the features that Windows has, features that I use daily. It also doesn't work with all of my games and software so it's a non starter for me still. Tried it several times but it always falls short of what I need. I do have it sandboxed in Windows but it's rare that it is needed for how I use a computer.
The article mentions that the author had a negative experience with Void Linux, that it was missing programs in its repository. If you considered it, give it a try anyway. Void is fast and ridiculously stable, even more so given it's a rolling release distro (so often has very new program versions). And in contrast to the author, I was impressed with the broad range of the package system - he might have had a bit of bad luck with the selection.
I've found a very comfortable home on Void Linux for nearly a decade at this point, and wouldn't consider any other distro for desktop use. I find Void to be rock-solid stable and relentlessly simple.
The author of TFA hopped from Mint -> Debian -> Bazzite -> Fedora -> Void -> Artix, so Void is an extremely obvious outlier here.
Aside from Void, every other distro he tried was either a newbie-friendly desktop distro (Mint, Debian, Fedora, Bazzite), or "Arch, but easier, with an installer" (Artix).
Bad luck with Void's package selection is fair enough, but I'm not sure what he meant by "driver compatibility was a big issue" - Void uses an upstream kernel and driver availability should be roughly the same anywhere.
He's using a Ryzen APU on desktop so graphics drivers shouldn't have been an issue there. The MacBook had problems with Broadcom Wi-Fi drivers on Artix(!), but I'd wager this would affect all distros out of the box, and Void has the Broadcom drivers[0] available as well.
It's frustrating that he doesn't explicitly mention what he couldn't find drivers for on Void. I assume it was Broadcom Wi-Fi and he didn't enable the nonfree repository. In fairness, Void's docs don't cover any Broadcom quirks so maybe this isn't as discoverable as it should be.
Seconding this. I was impressed by Void linux stability and speed: xbps (with xtools) might be the fastest and most powerful package manager I've *ever* used.
Sure, Void doesn't have the endless options of Arch+AUR for packages, but it had everything I needed. Even the well-maintained, latest versions of less common software, like Nim compiler.
The author might also missed that Void has a non-free repository, that you have to install for stuff like proprietary drivers, DRM and Steam.
Gaming is all well and good, but I'd be interested to hear of experiences with moving and using Audio apps (Ableton Live, Cubase and other Steinberg apps, plus many VSTs) from Windows to Linux.
I see Wine, YABridge and LinVST mentioned in searches, but while I've got plenty of Linux experience, I'm time-poor and would prefer to make computers make noises rather than spend my time making things work. I have Reaper which is cross-platform but again, getting the VSTs working would be great (at a bare minimum).
A Mac is not an option here. Any pointers gratefully received!
> I'm time-poor and would prefer to make computers make noises
Then Linux is not for you at this point. I don't mean to discourage you - for me, Reaper works, Scarlett works, ffmpeg works etc. But there are quirks. Reaper has horrible scaling on 4k screen, which I believe can be resolved by forcing UI scaling, but this requires change every time I switch from laptop to external monitor, so I just live with tiny buttons. Scarlett works, but requires JACK, and I never got it working properly with Pulse/Pipewire (outputs get duplicated sometimes), also control software doesn't exist, aside from one opensource reimplementation, which works but looks horrible.
> but I'd be interested to hear of experiences with moving and using Audio apps (Ableton Live
I've been using Linux for work and hobbies for more than a decade at this point, mostly Arch Linux, some CachyOS, but always had a partition of Windows available too. Why? Almost solely because Ableton does not run properly with Wine, Proton or any other tooling, and has never been able to do so, for as long as I've used Ableton (since version 8 or 9 I think).
If you spend most of your day with Ableton, then Linux is not ready for you, and then I'm not even considering plugins or what not, just the default and standard stuff is not running properly no matter what you'll try.
right - same here WRT windows partition. Not always using Live, but it gets used when it's necessary. I'm slightly disappointed that they haven't done the decent thing and released a Linux version, but .. ah well, what can ya do hey?
I love how windows-linux discussion is populated by DAW/VST incompatibility. I'm still new to the industry, and therefore also open minded about daw/plugins.
I actually had good experience with setting up yabridge, it could have worked for me I think. But the elephant in the room is that many big commercial plugins use JUCE as a framework, and the recent release of JUCE (JUCE8) just broke compatibility with wine and seem to be sabotaging wine-based usage completely, and are not considering going back at the moment.
There are patches based on binary diffs to JUCE7, but it is just so much pain to simply run the commonest plugins in the field :/
So I'm now kind of stuck between using windows with commercial plugins or use linux with mainly smaller scale alternatives (although there are good ones: lsp, decent sampler, cardinal, surge)
Thanks! I wasn't aware of the JUCE newer version issue.. I'll have to (sometime) dig into that a bit deeper. Me I don't mind the idea of the smaller-scale alternatives, but having to occasionally work withothers that aren't linux based could be.. problematic.
I can't speak for DAWs but in 2019 when I tried switching to native Linux my Scarlett 2i2 3rd gen USB audio interface did not play nicely with Debian at the time. I'd get an endless amount of crackles and pops during recordings / playback and I spent days going over tons of audio configs / tools (Jack, Alsa, PulseAudio, etc.). They weren't xruns, at least Jack wasn't reporting them as that. Buffer sizes were normal too.
The good news is the same interface today works fine with PipeWire, without needing to tweak anything. I am using Arch this time around.
Yeah, these days the Scarletts are fine (as is the aging Firewire connected Edirol FA-101 I've got attached). Non-DAW things such as Supercollider work fine, but I focus less on that sort of environment (which isn't a dis - SC is great!).
I use Reaper for Linux and love it. Getting Windows VSTs to work is okay with lin-vst and wine. Bascially install wine with your package manager, maybe run winecfg, then get lin-vst and make a copy of its single so-file, named the same as each vst binary in the same directory, then add that dir as a vst location in Reaper. As far as I remember.
Yes. Valve (Steam) spent more than a decade building and refining a translation layer called Proton. Nearly 80% of the vast Steam library is now compatible with Linux to the point they are releasing actual Linux consoles (Steam Deck and Steam Machine).
For your regular PC, you can install a gaming-focused distribution like Bazzite to get everything sorted out automatically.
80% is really impressive, but another way to state it is that 20% of the games you try won't work. I don't think I'd put up with that if I was a gamer. I guess maybe it's not evenly distributed. Do a higher percentage of the most popular games work?
That 20% is mostly covered by competitive online multiplayer games that use kernel-level anti-cheat systems which will only work on Windows. There's not a whole lot Valve can do about that, other than continuing to push Linux for gaming and hope that it gets popular enough to create an incentive for anti-cheat providers to start targeting Linux as well.
I never understood why game devs don't just segregate players based on their anti-cheat status. Have a setting in the game like "only play with anti-cheat verified players" that defaults to yes.
That way Linux gamers can still play with other Linux gamers if they want (and cheaters).
Not an ideal situation but probably better than nothing.
I think that would make Linux players into second-class citizens who could only play in a pool that is 90+% filled with Windows cheaters.
Segregating into two pools: Windows-verified, or Linux-unverified, would probably not work for Linux users either. It'd be the same problem (on a smaller scale) as not including kernel anticheat in Windows. No fun for the non-cheaters.
I'm not a gamer though, so I may be missing important details.
I think it's largely to do with the whether the games are PvP multiplayer or not. I.e. many such games have anti-cheat systems that embed in the Windows kernel (or something like that - my Windows internals knowledge is... slim).
I assert that most people who're happy running Linux on their desktop (for games or productivity or development) do not overlap much with the people who're happy to take kernel patches from UbiFuckingSoft. And this includes those people who're willing to take closed-source NVIDIA drivers.
Games with kernel-mode anti-cheat consistently don't work and probably never will (barring them having it removed or made optional). Titles released more recently are more likely to not work simply due to not having had fixes applied to them, although a rather large amount of newer games work fine out of the box if they aren't doing weird stuff. Other than that it's a toss-up, since while it's usually the same few things that prevent games from working properly on Linux, it's not something you as Jonothan S. Gamer will know about unless you go and do research and check ProtonDB and whatnot.
A good rule of thumb is that single player games generally just™ work and that older games generally just™ work.
In a word, yes. While Wine has been an option for decades, Valve and Proton have made gaming on Linux mainstream. You can check compatibility reports from https://www.protondb.com/ for whichever games you're interested in.
> Valve and Proton have made gaming on Linux mainstream.
"Mainstream" is maybe too hefty, the amount of Linux users (including SteamDeck) who participate in the Steam surveys are still in the single digit if I remember correctly. Most gamers today still use Windows, even though Valve made great strides with Proton.
I haven't had any issues installing AoE Gold under Wine. Furthermore, stuff on Steam is usually trivial to get running (just click and play). With Heroic same goes for stuff on GOG (and presumably Epic as well, IDK). PlayOnLinux and Lutris have good support for games you install from CD (I probably could have used either of them to install AoE Gold, but I've been using wine directly for so long I find it more convenient to do it myself).
Many are playable with Steam on Linux, each game in the store states whether that's supported or not. Even non-supported games allow an override. I've tried that for a few with varying success. Steam has so far refunded purchases that didn't run on Linux. Then there's Lutris which runs many old games fine.
Having a steam deck, I can say that gaming on linux is totally doable, but you may want to look on protondb to see what is not compatible with your library.
recently had need to run a legacy win32 game on linux. the game works fine but the updater is in some windows specific java that i just could not get to work, which is kind of ironic since its the "run anywhere" java that wouldnt work but the C++ game would. anyway -- i run the updater in a windows vm that has shared access to the game files, close the vm then run the game through wine. works.
Its simple. If you require specific software which only runs on Windows, then you cannot use Linux. If that's not the case, the Linux desktop these days is entirely capable of helping you achieve your goals.
I installed Bazzite on a slightly esoteric machine, a 16" dual-screen Asus laptop. It's not really my cup of tea as a distribution, either philosophically or practically, but it has some specific patches for Asus hardware and as a result it seems to work better in every way than Windows. Every couple of months I'm annoyed for a moment by all the immutability stuff and the package system, but for both work and play it's running perfectly.
I am pretty sure that my previous attempts at a Linux desktop have failed because I would tweak my setup by installing packages and updates until I broke it and needed to reinstall. But I want my machine to be indestructible and "just work". Waiting day(s) to diagnose and fix an issue just isn't worth it. I have been contemplating a switch to Linux again. This time, I will embrace a LTS distribution and virtualization so that my tinkering doesn't break things. I always want a safe level to fall back to.
Also, I would enthusiastically pay for a support subscription. I know they are out there. Which companies/organizations have the most positive impact in the open source community?
It has been a few years, but for example breaking the display, bluetooth, power states/sleep, or wifi. Or subtly messing up dependencies of various other packages that I was trying. I just don't want the overhead of system administration.
These days I mostly use VMs or WSL. But I am thinking that I want my host OS to be Linux.
Immutable saves you from packaging issues but configuration always has to happen to some degree. To help there maybe use file system snapshots (btrfs) to rollback changes.
From what I remember, trying to fix configuration was mostly to recover from whatever broken state package/distro updates caused. Thanks for the Silverblue suggestion. In recent years, I enjoyed using Pop!_OS, at least on VMs.
Linux user for 25-ish years here, and exclusively so.
I used to heavily configure my ubuntu distros to be keyboard exclusive with i3wm and such, but I ended up with regolith desktop, a version of ubuntu with pre installed i3wm and keyboard focus. I'm too old to keep my dotfiles updated.
Nowadays, imo you should only choose the package manager, any os using that chosen package manager (aptitude for ubuntu) definitely had a version that's close enough to your use cases.
Similarly, I picked up Linux in 1997 and have used it as my primary since 1999. I've distro hopped through probably a dozen or so distros, but ultimately landed on PopOS for most of my machines, similarly to you. These threads are always somewhat disheartening, hearing everybody say they tried to switch but couldn't because of one issue or another. I guess I've just learned to work through it.
I am very interested in the Steam Machine, because it will be an out-of-the-box Linux experience with (hopefully) no tweaking required. Hardware designed for Linux gaming from the beginning. I'm willing to put up with worse performance per dollar to not have to spend time tweaking the thing myself, similar to a game console.
I think Steam Machine + macOS laptop + NAS running debian headless is my personal compute plan for the next few years.
I'm not interested in the Steam Machine, but I DO am interested in switching my gaming PC to Steam OS! I hope the Steam Machine will put more pressure on getting Steam OS to the masses.
it's really good these days. nvidia finally fixed their drivers (i suppose all it took was becoming the richest company on earth), kde is really nicely polished and all the friction from the x11 to wayland transition is over (at least from my perspective of an end user of linux desktops).
it's remarkably stable and reliable and way less annoying than modern windows or macos. i'm looking forward to a panther lake thinkpad with robust linux support and incredible battery life.
I never understood the Linux guys. All that matters to a common user is the user interface and whether their apps and games run or not. They don't care about telemetry, architecture etc. The damn thing should just work and it should allow familiar interactions.
I have tried switching to Linux several times over the decades. It required many compromises on the interface and compatibilities. Why is it so difficult to slap on a clone of Windows or Mac UI on Linux? I'm not saying they are good. But it avoids the feel of moving to an alien land and learn everything afresh. People don't have time for that.
This is why I recommend macOS to everyone. It's the only OS that is truly polished and where you don't have to worry about viruses and everything just works. mac could be better, but it's still leading the pack. People don't want the OS to become their hobby.
I dislike what Microsoft is doing to Windows as much as the next guy but if you get Windows Pro and disable all the icky stuff it is a rock solid OS that just works. Sure, once a year an update might add some new icky stuff but then you just spend 10 minutes to find out how to disable that and go about your business. It. Just. Works.
I have an old Lenovo IdeaPad with fairly modest hardware, and I have both Fedora and Windows installed. About 90% of the time I use Fedora, and it works fine overall. The only thing that bothers me is that Firefox on Fedora feels noticeably more sluggish compared to Edge or Firefox on Windows. Maybe it’s just a perception issue, but I’d love to know what others are using as their web browser on Linux.
I switched to Debian/Cinnamon few weeks ago. I am fairly good with the server sides of things, but the desktop a little painful.
Screens dont wake up properly, sometimes only one screens wakes up, sometimes one screen wakes up with a wrong resolution. The usual linux desktop problems where nothing really works and finding a solution is very hard to many different permutations of hardware / os / kernel / drivers / window manager / etc.
I have the framework desktop with AMD 395+
My windows ssd is plugged and I can boot it directly using virt-manager, so thats kinda solves some windows specific stuff like tax software.
You are using a distro that is generally very behind on software versions and doesn’t bundle non free software (Debian) on a laptop with brand new hardware. Additionally, you are running a DE (cinnamon) which is really designed for a specific distro (Mint) which you are not using.
If you want stuff to just work you might want to try using a more up to date distro with a mainstream desktop. Stock Ubuntu or Fedora would probably work fine for you.
The amd drivers might not there, and they will continue to not be there on the version of the kernel you are using and choosing to be stuck on by using Debian. Drivers are part of the kernel in Linux, it’s not how windows works. Ubuntu and Fedora are not unstable, you are just choosing pain for yourself.
Stable in Linux language is a synonym for OLD. Don't let any stable OSes near any hardware that is newer than the release, and you'll be fine.
Linux 6.12 was released back in 2024, which is several months earlier than the hardware you have. So the reasonable expectation is that there is a high chance that fixes for it won't be in yet.
And use the builtin AMD drivers, you shouldn't have to touch those assuming other choices were done ok.
Honestly, just switching to a kernel that isn't older than your hardware have a decent chance of fixing your issues. It is typically fine to upgrade kernels unless the distro has made some special modifications to them, and it was a very long time since I was hit by something like that.
I’m not shifting any goal posts. I’m just tired of these posts from people saying that Linux is unstable, has quirks, etc but when you dig into it, all of the “quirks” are actually the result of strange decisions made by the author.
It’s fine to be new to Linux, but please refrain from the sweeping generalizations until you are more familiar with how it works.
This has been my issue as well - screens waking or not waking up. On latest Linux Mint and everything is great except when switching back and forth inputs between my personal and work laptop (running Windows), I have to do it twice going to my personal laptop or else the external monitor won't show.
Frankly I'd love to switch from Windows to Linux. But it's the applications. My last attempt to switch got hung up on a few things (in order if importance, probably):
- Quicken. I have 30 years of personal financial data in quicken. I'm not completely opposed to migrating to something else, but I haven't seen a good substitute. I'd probably have to learn double entry bookkeeping, and I'm unsure if other software could still download data from my bank and investment accounts. I'm sure as hell not going to start entering transactions manually (ugh).
- Ableton live. I do have a copy of bitwig, but I am unfamiliar with its workflow, and would have to figure out which of my vsts I would lose, and it seems a big pain in the ass.
- Plex server. For some reason, out of the box this was dog slow. Because of the other issues, I was unwilling to spend the time to try to figure out what was going on with this.
- The are games I would probably lose, but honestly there are so many games available I doubt I would care that much.
How many hundreds of hours am I gonna have to take to figure this all out before I have a working system again? Not my idea of a good time even if I like the outcome.
Edit: and this is from somebody who loves the idea of Linux! I first installed 0.11 or 0.12 way back in the early 90s from a stack of floppies!
> - Quicken. I have 30 years of personal financial data in quicken. I'm not completely opposed to migrating to something else,
Genuinely curious - outside of personal satisfaction/scratching the itch to store data, does personal financial data dating 30 years ago serve any practical purpose?
Occasionally I want to see what I paid for something, or when it happened, or who the vendor was. So if I can't migrate the data somehow, I'd still have to keep a copy of quicken around to access that old data even if I was using some other software for current data.
I might be willing to give all that up if I could find something that worked for new transactions, but I haven't found it yet.
Based on your assessment you’d have almost no issue at all.
I’m almost certain you’d have no trouble running Quicken or Ableton. Ableton even has a Bottles configuration available, which is a one-click GUI install:
Of course, if Wine-based solutions really don’t work, you also have the option to run a VM or dual boot for those one-off needs.
Your comment on plex server seems odd. It seems like most people run it via Docker, I can’t imagine what kind of Linux-specific issue you had. Docker/podman on Linux is quite superior to the experience on Mac and Windows.
As far as games, I have trouble finding games that don’t work. Steam and other launchers for other stores have pretty much eliminated this issue. There are even some online games with anti-cheat software that work in Linux.
Hundreds of hours? No, not really. Not these days. I know it’s hard to believe me but I went through this same thing switching from macOS to Linux last year. I was shocked, I almost thought my experiment would fail and I’d go back. But no, it’s so solid and a bunch of stuff I expected to not work just…worked. (I chose Bazzite as my distribution on a Framework 13).
Current quicken doesn't run on Linux, and the web version doesn't connect to any online investment accounts as far as I know, only bank accounts.
Ableton would still have the issue of: which plugins can I still somehow get to work? And which do I just lose? And then: how reliable is it? Does it really just work, or am I gonna be fighting glitches all the time?
I suspect part of the problem might be a mental block on my end. I spent 25 years as a sysadmin before I retired, and the idea of going back to that is just not acceptable. And I know it would be hundreds of hours because that's what I spent last time I tried to make the switch a few months ago.
I know it’s not the same application but Quicken Simplifi definitely connects to investment accounts.
Hundreds of hours makes me wonder what distribution you chose…I think if you choose something that’s more designed to work out of the box as a ready to go solution you might have a better experience. For example, since I like occasionally playing games, I chose Bazzite which comes with all the gaming stuff installed already and is an immutable OS that “just works.”
And for sure, I think trying to shoehorn complicated non-Linux applications into your Linux workflow might waste your time. I tried this with Autodesk Fusion and I almost got it to work. But it didn’t work. So I just use that on Windows, but it’s also nice to not be bothering with Windows for the majority of what I do.
The way I do it is that my laptop is Linux and my desktop is on Windows and I can just RDP into it over WireGuard to use Windows apps. So I guess this is cheating: ideally my desktop also leaves Windows but I haven’t made that leap.
I also switched to Linux last month. It hasn't been a smooth experience with my GPU as I'm encountering memory leaks in popular compositors. I also get 150-200ms keyboard input delay in all games using some compositors but not all. I documented as much as I could here https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/gpu-memory-allocation-bugs-wi....
Still, despite all of that when it works it is better than Windows. It's just ironic that my Linux desktop is less stable than Windows 10 since I have to reboot 2-3 times a day from GPU memory leaks. Windows 10 was really stable with the same hardware and had no input delay in games. I only rebooted when the OS pushed an update since I keep my machine on 24 / 7.
It would be fair to mention that this is happening for you with a decade old GPU using an EOL driver, which sucks, but is unlikely to be a common experience.
> It would be fair to mention that this is happening for you with a decade old GPU using an EOL driver, which sucks, but is unlikely to be a common experience.
The drivers are still getting maintained by NVIDIA until August 2026. They also got classified as "legacy" on paper 1 day before I installed them.
The compositor memory leak is affecting a lot of people. Since COSMIC and niri both use the same one (smithay), there's threads on GitHub with people using modern GPUs, both NVIDIA and AMD who experience it. There's a lot of replies across all of the different open issues.
The GPU allocation issue on Wayland (separate from the memory leak) also has hundreds of replies on the NVIDIA developer forums with people using new NVIDIA cards with the latest drivers.
The thing is, most people don't talk about either of them because if you have 8+ GB of GPU memory and turn your computer off every night then you won't experience this problem since all GPU memory allocations get reset on shutdown. It happens to be more of a direct problem for me because I have 2 GB of GPU memory but that doesn't mean the problem isn't common. The root cause is still there. Even if I switched to an AMD GPU the niri / smithay memory leak would be present. Instead of rebooting twice a day, if the GPU had 8 GB of memory I'd have to reboot every 2 days (x4 basically).
Since I opened that issue on GitHub NVIDIA did acknowledge it and suggested I try their experimental egl-wayland2 library. I did try that and it hasn't fixed it fully but it has made GPU memory allocations more stable. It even fixed 1 type of leak in niri. This library is decoupled from the drivers themselves as far as I know. I mean, this same library could still be used for the 590 series, it's not 580 specific which means it's not dependent on your GPU model.
> The compositor memory leak is affecting a lot of people. Since COSMIC and niri both use the same one (smithay), there's threads on GitHub with people using modern GPUs, both NVIDIA and AMD who experience it. There's a lot of replies across all of the different open issues.
But then this sounds like a bug in that particular compositor rather than the driver(s)?
fwiw, I have a modern nvidia card, and use the proprietary drivers, and Wayland (KDE/KWin), and that box has a few weeks of uptime.
> But then this sounds like a bug in that particular compositor rather than the driver(s)?
The NVIDIA GPU memory allocation issue affects all NVIDIA cards, at least based on that forum post where there's a good amount of people replying with similar issues with a large combo of cards + drivers.
You probably don't notice it because you rarely ever use all of your GPU's memory at once. Try running `watch nvidia-smi` and then open multiple copies of every hardware accelerated app you have available. Once you reach nearly the max GPU memory apps will either start crashing or fail to open and if you get semi-unlucky your compositor (including KDE on Wayland) will crash if it's the app trying to allocate resources to render the window. I've had plasmashell or kwin hard lock / crash many times with just a small amount of testing.
The expectation is the driver allocates those memory resources to system memory instead of denying the memory to the app. It works correctly in X11 or if you have an AMD card, in Wayland and X11.
The leak is separate and is compositor specific, possibly related to NVIDIA driver bugs (to some degree) but this leak wouldn't be experienced unless you used this compositor. This leak is the compositor doesn't release any GPU memory after any window is closed, so simply opening and closing apps will cause the leak. Combine this with the first problem and that's how you end up rebooting every few hours with a lower end GPU. AMD and NVIDIA are affected.
The post goes into all of these details and there's reproducible tests, and even demo videos showing the first GPU memory allocation problem in Plasma Wayland but not Plasma X11. It also links to all of the related GitHub issues that I could find.
I tried it (PopOS) on my old gaming laptop. It worked when it worked but when it didn't, it REALLY didn't. Linux unfortunately does not support my preferred (which I use semi-professionally) photo software, either (Capture One). Linux desktop feels like nuclear power to me - I've tried switching many many times over the last 20 years and it's just never quite there. I even use a lot of the open source solutions for office software etc. already, just on Windows.
Ah, so karma is a thing on HN as well. That would explain it.
Since 2001 I've used Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, Ubuntu, and Mint. I got rid of them at the first available opportunity. Elon Musk himself couldn't pay me enough to switch to Linux.
For some reason, there's a huge amount of Hacker News readers who are still full-time Windows users. With the forced migration to Windows 11, I guess a lot of them are now not only trying out Linux for the first time (as a desktop system), but also for some reason going for Arch derivatives, which is always fun to see a beginner mess with LOL
I went Arch recently as well for about 6 months but am now back on Windows. I was impressed by the amount of games that "just work" but ultimately went back for the few that didn't. Had issues on BF6 and major performance issues on Borderlands 4.
The line of defenses are different. All my Linux applications are either installed via Flatpak (which runs in a sandbox) or via the official package registry (which requires programs to be open source, and has a strong track record)
> After a Windows update (that I didn't choose to do) wiped that partition and, consequently, the Linux installation
WHAT? How people could tolerate a software that wipes partitions without asking? I mean, I can see that it can be handy if OS managed partitions by itself without asking a user what to do, but if it leads to removing user created partitions, it is a no go.
A long time ago I tried to install Mandrake Linux. In the installation process I started to change partition table and wiped it all, due to a fact that Mandrake Linux used its own custom made partition managed written in Perl that applied changes to a partition table as they arrive. I was used to fdisk, that accumulate changes and allows to review them before applying, the behavior of Mandrake's partition manages was completely alien for me. It was the first and the last time I touched Mandrake or its successor Mandriva or anything with "Mand" in front, even despite the fact that it was my mistake, I should've learned more about the partition manager before using it. It was hard (or maybe impossible) to do in an installer, but it is not an excuse. It was the last time I used installers to install Linux, I don't trust them anymore.
But people are tolerating windows that can wipe a partition when you even do not touch them. I can empathize the author ditching Windows.
It is a known and fairly common dual booting people gets hit with in that windows update rewrite the dual booting setup, it is possible that the author misunderstood what had happened and that it could have been fixed by just fixing the boot setup.
That should of course not be necessary, but it could have saved a few hours of setup if that was the case.
I wouldn't worry much about operating systems. They are just a means to an end (which is running your applications) few are in the situation that 100% of their applications run on more than 1 OS, so they even get a choice of OS.
Oh look, a “I switched to linux” article that will convince nobody because it’s full of issues they ran into that users don’t want to and should not have to learn how to solve. Or maybe I’m wrong and everything is smooth now? _reads article_ Nope, it’s exactly as I expected.
Even though the author trivialized the problems he had getting his laptop up and running, there were enough obstacles to keep 90% of non-techies from actually getting it working. How many normies have a USB ethernet laying around and understand enough to uninstall drivers that are interfering with the UI?
It's next to impossible to get windows up and running if you dare not get a computer with it preinstalled, AHCI drivers are almost never included in the installation disc. And windows support gives you links to self installing exe files which you can't run, because you presumably run a linux live cd to be able to access the internet and ask for help, and exe files don't run on it, and can't be accessed by the windows installer either.
Getting Windows up and running isn't necessarily easier. There was a recent review of a handheld Windows device that needed unauthorized hidden driver updates to get performance to match Steam OS. The only way to avoid this type of stuff is to get a Laptop with Ubuntu or Windows preinstalled.
Windows is not exactly free of this sort of nonsense either. Just recently I built a new PC for a friend, and we wanted to keep using his old SSD and Windows installation. After messing about with Bitlocker recovery keys which was already cumbersome enough, we ran into a catch-22 issue where we needed internet access to be able to log in and verify his Microsoft account, but we needed to install a driver for the new motherboard's networking chipset first, for which you need to be able to log in to an account first. Eventually we found that you can use USB tethering from a phone to gain internet access, for which no special driver is needed, which got around the issue but it was not exactly an obvious solution.
I just turned 60. My first computer was a 4.77MHz IBM PC with an 8088 processor, two floppy drives, and that magnificent mechanical keyboard IBM shipped in those days. My father, clearly receiving excellent financial advice at the time, picked up a 300bps Hayes modem for the princely sum of $599. CompuServe, here I come!
For context, this was early 1982. That 599 would cost 1,900 today — still a lot for a modem, but not quite the "gazillion" I remembered. Still, it illustrates just how far we've come.
Since then, I've written software professionally for over 40 years (with varying degrees of success). I've owned well over 200 computers — roughly 90% Wintel machines and 10% MacBooks. I've built them, repaired them, debugged them, and occasionally, after particularly frustrating days, set them back together again. I like to think I know my way around a PC.
Six months ago, I decided it was time. "This is the year of the Linux desktop on my machine," I declared, and I meant it. I installed over 20 of the most popular distributions from DistroWatch and used each one for at least two weeks. I was on a mission to rediscover the joy of computing.
For a while, it was genuinely fun. The sheer number of options was overwhelming in the best way possible. Customization everywhere I looked. All those incredible free software packages waiting in the repositories. In the beginning, I didn't even mind that I found myself doing full reinstalls every two or three days due to random instabilities. I was living the dream. Desktop effects and visual flair? Bring it on. Why does Compiz get so much criticism these days? What's more satisfying than a beautifully animated window?
Six weeks in, things changed. The Linux installations started to degrade — subtle at first, then undeniable. Random slowdowns. Browser links that wouldn't register for 10 or 15 seconds. The kind of frustration that makes you stare at the screen and wonder what's happening under the hood. It was consistent across distributions, which suggests this wasn't just a bad package here or there. Something fundamental was happening.
And yes, I'm aware of the irony. The system celebrated for its stability and reliability was the one leaving me longing for a responsive desktop environment. But that's exactly what I experienced, and I gave each distribution a fair shot.
There's also the practical reality: I'm a heavy Ableton Live user, and dual-booting has become increasingly grating. The Linux audio ecosystem has made real progress, but for my specific workflow, it's not there yet. Maybe in another year or two.
So I'm back on Windows 11. It works. It doesn't surprise me. After four decades, I'm okay with "it works" as a primary criterion.
Will I try Linux again? Maybe. The ecosystem continues to improve, and who knows what the next wave of AI-assisted tools might change. But for now, I wanted to share an honest account of what I encountered — because I genuinely wanted Linux to win.
> Six weeks in, things changed. The Linux installations started to degrade — subtle at first, then undeniable. Random slowdowns. Browser links that wouldn't register for 10 or 15 seconds.
This is something that I would expect with Windows over time (not in a few weeks though) but has never happened to me with Linux. I have run less stable rolling release distros, and I have done multiple major version upgrades on the same machine over time over many machines.
its sounds to me as though you are doing some unusual things - few people use Compiz now because DEs like KDE provide those through their default Window managers.
>> Six weeks in, things changed. The Linux installations started to degrade — subtle at first, then undeniable. Random slowdowns. Browser links that wouldn't register for 10 or 15 seconds. The kind of frustration that makes you stare at the screen and wonder what's happening under the hood. It was consistent across distributions, which suggests this wasn't just a bad package here or there. Something fundamental was happening.
Without more details it would be difficult to determine what problems you were having.
I have never had problems like you describe with Linux. I would be interested to know more details.
> The Linux installations started to degrade — subtle at first, then undeniable. Random slowdowns. Browser links that wouldn't register for 10 or 15 seconds.
Very interesting. It is something I've never hit. Or, rather, I know the symptoms, but in my case they are caused not by the age of the installation, but by the memory use and swapping. When I compile something big, it can eat a lot of memory, and even 32Gb or RAM is not enough sometimes, there are lags and sometimes very painful.
It is really interesting because the behavior was persistent for all Linux distributions you tried, so probably there was some program that ate all the memory. Pity you didn't try running top and watching CPU and memory usage. Now I'll think of possible causes to the end of my days without any hope to find a real cause.
> Six months ago, I decided it was time. "This is the year of the Linux desktop on my machine," I declared, and I meant it. I installed over 20 of the most popular distributions from DistroWatch and used each one for at least two weeks. I was on a mission to rediscover the joy of computing.
Twenty distributions in six months, using each one for at least two weeks. Aside from the overlap, the post claims experience with debugging and repairing computers - but a lot of the blame here is placed on Linux without specifics of hardware of actual distributions used. Reads formulated like the typical narrative meant to deride Linux with surface level anecdotes.
I agree modern Windows sucks for the average consumer, with all the dark patterns and icky stuff, but if you are on this forum and technically inclined enough to install Linux, you can just disable all the bad parts of Windows and get a rock solid OS with perfect compatibility. Unpopular opinion, I know, but that's how I view it.
I hope one day to upgrade my laptop to a Honor/Huawei AMD Ryzen AI computer to run Linux. Modern Macbooks unfortunatly do not run Linux and the other laptop manifacturers basically produce expensive trash laptops
The M2 models came out in 2022. You can't buy them new anymore.
Asahi linux doesn't support any of the currently sold macbooks, so I think it's fair to say modern macbooks don't run linux.
This is also at Apple's mercy, if enough people do it there's a non-zero chance they lock things down further. They've done even more consumer-unfriendly things before.
I've been using an Asus EliteBook for the last 3 years. Despite taking a beating, the build quality has held up flawlessly and with 32 GB of RAM, 1 kg form factor, and great battery life, I have no reason to upgrade yet.
I'd rather be concerned about friendly fire from our own.
As an US American, i'd rather be concerned about big tech and government backdoors than anything else.
Especially in the current atmosphere of doom inside the US.
Nonsense. I've been running Linux just fine as my daily driver on Macbook M4 for a year. Besides battery life (VM is kinda heavy on it) and some minor issues (fewer than you'd think, especially with Vulkan landing in UTM today) it's the best Linux laptop I've owned ever so far. I like macOS as much as the next Linux user here, but it's fairly decent as a hypervisor. If anything, at least it comes with UI unlike Intel ME.
Repairable laptops don't reduce e-waste. You replace the mainboard and then what? You have a spare mainboard that sits there collecting dust. The best way to prevent e-waste is to build durable laptops that last a lifetime. Like Dell, HP and Lenovo have been doing for years (while also being very repairable at the same time).
We have open source documentation and CAD around the Mainboards to enable people to reuse them as single board computers or mini PCs after upgrading them out of their laptops. Even if the original owner of the Mainboard has no use for that, the functionality means it has resale value for others to use, reducing waste.
Frameworks computers are expensive, you aren't reducing the e-waste because on amd ryzen ai laptops the ram is soldered like in the other laptops from other manifacturers
That is incorrect. All of our laptops have modular, upgradable memory. Our Framework Desktop is a mini PC that does not because AMD’s Ryzen AI Max platform doesn’t support it. Regardless, we maximized modularity and reuseability on that product too by following PC standards. It uses a MiniITX form factor, standard 120mm fan, and FlexATX power supply.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. They're expensive because they don't have the volume that other manufacturers have. If you dig in my comment history, you'll see me complain about the soldered in ram as well, and some of their other decisions. However their modular configuration is still better than the rest of them.
First you don't have to dump anything to use Linux. The whole thing should not be as antogonistic.
I switched to Linux, Arch btw, Omarchy, sometime last year when it was announced. I installed it on my old Thinkpad and it worked wonderfully, for most part. I realized that I am more productive there in real sense and experience is more delightful.
When I would go back to Mac, I would realize I need several clicks to accomplish something I had on shortcut available. Having websites/apps on shortcuts as an app is huge help. Also working on command line is really much more focused.
Sometimes in September I plugged Thinkpad to desktop setup and in December I set my powerful computer to Omarchy as well.
It isn't seamless experience, there are issues switching from speakers to headphones and dictation can be hard to setup. Overall whole machine seems more powerful and interesting to work on.
This is first time in many years that I can both play and work on same machine which is definitely welcome and surprising.
One more thing to note, nowadays Arch is more stable then Ubunty and works better. However, any distro you pick, you should be happy with, especially if you want to do work, you should just pick and stick with distro.
Eh, I wanted to do this, but the manufacturer of my laptop doesn't allow me to disable RST in the BIOS, so I can only work from a flash drive, and it's slow. :(
It is indeed a huge problem. The whole operating system now behaves and
feels like the US government spying on everyone. Now, Microsoft has done
that before, but with Win11 it really now seems almost shameless AND
desperate in abusing users, while also alienating many of them via
"features" they don't want, in particular all the AI garbage slop.
It does not really affect me that much, as I switched to Linux in 2005
or so, give or take, but some people around me, in particular elderly,
depend on Windows still. So that's a dilemma. Do I want to install Win11
for them? Or Win10? And help maintain either? Replacing those computers
with Linux is not so trivial. You would need virtually kind of 100%
"what works on Windows must work on Linux too". Any complexity is a real
total showstopper for many elderly people who have very little experience
with computer systems.
Davinci Resolve is a high end professional video editing suite, and is well supported on Linux. Also Lightworks (but I'm biased because I used to work there).
I don’t really agree with the “Windows 11 is unstable” narrative, especially compared to the ways that system updates on macOS and Linux have not always been 100% stable.
The functionality of the iPhone connection to Linux is not unique to the platform, that works on Windows as well. iPhones present themselves as cameras when connected via USB and as the author found out, some apps present their internal storage for manipulation.
I’m surprised the author didn’t get KDE Connect to work. It’s a clutch app, and it’s even better for Android users. It’s one of the things that has had me consider switching to Android over iPhone (but there are still a couple of things I just can’t quite get over leaving behind like FaceTime for my non-technical family, the unmatched-by-competitors utility of AirTags, Siri Shortcuts, and my general feeling that without installing GrapheneOS, that Android is a less private and secure OS).
> So why did I switch to Linux, and why am I writing this article about the experience? In a word: joy.
I think this is really what more people should take away from the switch. A lot of the time I see people not wanting to make the leap because they're afraid: Afraid of learning how to use the command line, afraid of asking other people for help, afraid of really using the computer. Learning how things work is how you learn to be free, and that holds true no matter your hobby. The cyclist with their repair kit, the driver with their beater car, the cook and their kitchenware. The more we give away for the sake of immediate convenience, the less control we have.
Linux is no longer in the realm of needing to be an expert to resolve issues, just a little bit of willingness to experiment. This isn't to say all issues are easily solvable, there's plenty of workflows that still require you to stay on Windows and some edge cases where things won't work as you expect. But I always encourage people to try, because why not?
Darktable is the best photography editing and classifying software I've ever used. New users should be warned it's quite power-user centric though. Adopting isn't like opening up Lightroom and messing around. You may have to read a bit of documentation regarding the modules and different workflows (i.e. Sigmoid vs FilmicRGB).
I think the Ansel developer has a YouTube series with tutorials on how to edit in Darktable using the Filmic RGB workflow. Not sure if that's where I'd get started nowadays (I've just adopted Sigmoid and it's way quicker to edit with it), but it gave me a solid base in how to use this software.
I tested literally all alternatives to Lightroom, including even other commercial Windows only software, just because I want to get off the subscription. I tested two specific functions I use and need, and zero of all other programs do them well. It's frustrating.
to add on: alternatives I am seriously considering is buying a macbook m2 purely for lightroom and run linux on intel, and macbook m2 + asahi + dumping the intel.
Darktable is another piece of software that really shows warts in UX.
For example, you can right click empty space to "remove" or "update path to file..." in the left hand rail. There shouldn't be a right click option in empty space.
Everything lower case makes it very difficult to quickly parse, especially the settings menu.
Inkscape is also full of these sins. For that matter, so is KDE.
No libre office suite will ever be on par with Microsoft proprietary options. It's a constant race of keeping up with features, using mostly unpaid volunteer developers.
I've used Linux for 25+ years and my reaction is always to do my best with the options I have, but in those cases when it's not enough I just say "I'm sorry but I can't edit this document" or "sorry but some of the formatting was lost when I saved this in libreoffice".
The thing is that I'm a senior Linux specialist so people accept my excuses because they generally need my work.
> It's a constant race of keeping up with features, using mostly unpaid volunteer developers.
What new features are Microsoft bringing out that are that critical for LibreOffice et al to catch up with?
I can’t think of much which I use that wasn’t already available in Office 95 which was released 30 years ago.
Aside from OOXML (which isn’t nearly as open as the name suggests) and the ribbon bar (which i personally hate), there hasn’t really been any big innovations.
The only features I can think of are:
- better security model for marcos. But that was only needed because MS Office was insecure to begin with so not really relevant here either
- Unicode support
- more rows in excel (though generally once you start reaching that point, the memory footprint of Excel becomes too great to make working on that spreadsheet practical)
The real issue with LibreOffice isn’t new features. It’s the subtle rending and parsing quirks when working on OOXML documents. But that’s likely Microsoft’s fault and thus OOXML working as intended.
I don’t doubt there’s been plenty of new features. But are they significant enough that users on older versions or non-MS suites are left longing for the latest version of Excel?
I just don’t think there is much innovation left. Or at least not without changing the UX and/or paradigm significantly. Neither of which have happened.
Unless you need precise formatting because you will send someone nontrivial slides to present, libreoffice should be fine.
Excel really depends - if you're using it as a glorified document with a table, then libreoffice will do fine. If you need compatibility and more advanced features, or your whole company runs on excel like a financial corp - there's no alternative. VM in that case.
As far as compatibility goes, OnlyOffice is fairly good at it, more geared towards MS-compatibility than LibreOffice, which is more of its own thing (and pretty good at that).
This never lasts long, in my experience. It’s a nice idea, but it’s a huge pain. At some point, I always end up sticking with the OS that has what I need, which is never Linux. Linux is what I install when feeling idealistic, but it doesn’t allow me to do anything I can’t do on a mainstream OS that is mission critical to my life.
I’d say commit. Force yourself to find new tools and workflows on the new OS of choice. If that isn’t possible, it seems like a waste of time and effort.
I can't fully switch because of audio plugins but I'm using Linux, Windows, and macOS anyway because I'm creating cross-platform apps. I think it's best to use all common operating systems and stay proficient with them.
>Dolphin held a pleasant surprise: it could detect my iPhone when it was plugged in. This made it a snap to transfer files to and from my phone as the file manager granted full file access to the iPhone
Do iphones show the file system as a USB storage or MTP device when plugged into a computer? If so, that has worked for many years.
You can also access the file system over the local network from Dolphin using KDE connect. I know that with Android the phone just appears as a drive and I think its the same with Apple devices.
Not really, Linux evangelists are a thing because Linux is primarily held back by lack of adoption. A lot of common issues can be attributed to either:
1. The hardware manufacturer has never tested Linux support for drivers.
2. Some application that you need doesn't target Linux due to lack of users
This isn't everything, sure. But I think it's a majority of the headaches. Thus, Linux-users really want other people to also use Linux, so that companies actually give a shit about supporting it.
There's also the whole ideology involved. A lot of companies are increasingly pushing that you are not allowed to control the computer/phone/device you buy and Linux is at the forefront of combating this.
Am I the only one who thinks (mobile safari with an ad blocker) it’s a jackass move to show a fake popup that leads to “must be an adblocker” and prevents page viewing? Or maybe just bad JS junk causing it?
Update: OMG I turned ad blocker off and what a disaster of a site.
I like it because it's based on Ubuntu, so there's almost always a working guide/solution targeting it. It also ships with Nvidia drivers which saves a lot of headaches for some users. To me the game-changer is the fact that it supports tiling window management with minimal configuration.
Linus runs this specifically because it supports kernel development decently well. If you aren’t developing the kernel, his reasons for running Fedora have little to no impact on you.
Can we stop with the implicit agism that always pops up in Linux threads? I know it's meant to be positive for Linux but it's still agism that diminishes people whose only crime is that they're of advanced age.
I hate it too. Not long ago I met a grandmother who had spent part of her career writing embedded software for nuclear reactors. I met many others who had jobs in technology.
I'm waiting on Ableton, Arturia, and Native Instruments. The latter two should have the easiest time since all their stuff is already VST3 and it can support Linux.
As somebody who's doing the same thing for the first time in almost 2 decades: kubuntu wins for me.
Mint was too buggy. It just felt so single-threaded. It had upsides - easiest Nvidia support for example. Cinnamon is nicely customizable and has some great ideas but it's just too rough around the edges.
Raw Debian was just too hard to get Nvidia drivers playing nice.
But for "I'm comfy editing config files but I need some hand-holding for this" KDE with Ubuntu is the best balance of performance and clean design and support.
My biggest disappointment is how little batteries-included gui I'm seeing for core Linux functionality. Where is the systemd service manager? Why are all the file managers so bad at editing permissions?
I never run into stability issues and couldn't care less about telemetry which feels like admitting some kind of a sin on HN. Windows 11 is fine and Linux will always be for niche use cases.
It’s worth acknowledging the real challenges raised in this thread: desktop Linux still has rough edges for some use cases, hardware support isn’t always perfect, and niche professional software may lack native support or require workarounds. But these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations so much as ecosystem and investment gaps, areas where community projects, standards efforts, and wider adoption could drive improvement without sacrificing freedom.
Viewed through the lens of digital autonomy and citizenship, the question isn’t simply “Is Linux perfect?” but rather: Do we want our fundamental computing environment to be ultimately under our control, or controlled by private interests with their own incentives?
> Viewed through the lens of digital autonomy and citizenship, the question isn’t simply “Is Linux perfect?” but rather: Do we want our fundamental computing environment to be ultimately under our control, or controlled by private interests with their own incentives?
As a user of Linux as my main desktop OS for more than 20 years, a user of Linux far longer than that, and a promoter of FOSS before that was a term, this has always been the question. Most of the world does not care. I suspect that is more true today than ever before. There are now adults that grew up in the age of social media that have no idea how local computing works.
Not to be negative but the "obstacles" to adopting Linux were never actually obstacles most of the time. Fifteen years ago my mother started using Linux as her main OS with no training. I gave her the login information, but never had a chance to show her how to use it, and she just figured it out on her own. Everything just worked, including exchanging MS Office documents for work.
> Most of the world does not care. I suspect that is more true today than ever before. There are now adults that grew up in the age of social media that have no idea how local computing works.
Yep. I was amazed when I was talking to a friend who's a bit younger (late 20s) and told him about a fangame you could just download from a website (Dr Robotnik's Ring Racers, for the record) and he was skeptical and concerned at the idea of just downloading and running an executable from somewhere on the internet.
I suspect most adults these days are like this; their computing experience is limited to the web browser and large official corporate-run software repositories e.g. app stores and Steam. Which ironically means they would do just fine on Linux, but there's also no incentive for them to switch off Windows/MacOS.
To them, Microsoft and Apple having control of their files and automatically backing up their home directory to Azure/iCloud is a feature, not a problem.
> and he was skeptical and concerned at the idea of just downloading and running an executable from somewhere on the internet
Ironically, being concerned and skeptical about running random executables from the internet is a good idea in general.
To be fair, downloading and running random executables from the internet is a genuinely terrible security model when the OS (like Windows, Linux, or (to a lesser extent) MacOS) does nothing to prevent it from doing anything you can do.
I think Arduino and RPi demonstrate that there is still a relatively strong attraction for tinkering. In the past, freedom meant a lot to tinkerers. My sense is that this is not so true today. Perhaps I am wrong. It may be that few people respect licensing enough to care. As long as somebody (not necessarily the producer) has made a youtube video of how to hack something, that's good enough.
This was probably always true. Replace youtube with Byte magazine and it was probably the same 45 years ago. I wonder if the percentage of true FOSS adherents has changed much. It would be a bit of a paradox if the percent of FOSS software has exploded and the percent of FOSS adherents has declined.
Note: I mean "adherent" to mean something different than "user".
> I think Arduino and RPi demonstrate that there is still a relatively strong attraction for tinkering
Raspberry Pi is an interesting example because it is constantly criticized by people who complain about the closed source blobs, the non-open schematics, and other choices that don’t appease the purists.
Yet it does a great job at letting users do what they want to do with it, which is get to using it. It’s more accessible than the open counterparts, more available, has more guides, and has more accessories.
The situation has a lot of parallels to why people use Windows instead of seeking alternatives: It’s accessible, easy, and they can focus on doing what they want with the computer.
I don't think tinkering is the dominant culture behind tech anymore, but it's definitely operating at a higher scale than ever before. There's more OSS projects than ever, and there are tons of niche areas with entire communities. Examples could include: LoRa radios (or LoRA adaptors!), 3d printing, FPGA hacking, new games for retro hardware...
> There are now adults that grew up in the age of social media that have no idea how local computing works.
Very few people of any age understood how local computing (or any computing) works. There's probably more now since most of the world is connected.
Profit scale has reached a point where commercial OS creators have to do stuff like shove ads into the UI. There's probably more legitimate need from non-developers to use Linux now than ever before, just to get a better base-line user experience.
You are right. Most will never care. I think of it like, lets try to keep the lights on for the folks that inevitably get burned and need an escape hatch. Many will not, but always some will. At least that's my way of not being a techno-nihilist.
The same with multiple people I know. Its not perfect, but neither is Windows.
> There are now adults that grew up in the age of social media that have no idea how local computing works.
They like it given a chance. My daughters for example far prefer Linux to Windows.
> They like it given a chance. My daughters for example far prefer Linux to Windows.
The two topics are orthogonal. GP talks about "local computing" vs. "black box in the cloud", the difference between running it vs. using it. You're talking about various options to run locally, the difference between running it this way or that way.
Linux or Windows users will understand basic computing concepts like files and a file system structure, processes, basic networking. Many modern phone "app" users just know what the app and device shows them, and that's not much. Modern computing hides every bit of useful knowledge from the user. They get nothing beyond what service the provider wants them to consume.
Desktop Windows still has rough edges. Desktop MacOS still has rough edges. Desktop Linux still has rough edges. Pick your poison.
Niche professional software may lack native Windows support or require workarounds.
Windows has a strong grip in enterprise environments where it is desirable to remove desktop control from users.
You have things like FreeIPA and Samba making weak offers beyond directory services in that direction. You have things like OpenTofu and Ansible making partial efforts in that direction. But you don't have an integrated goto standard solution for giving Linux desktop control to the enterprise. So Windows continues its grip in the enterprise. (If I'm wrong, please post a correction here. I'll be grateful for the education.)
For companies less obsessed with taking control away from users, Windows has less of a grip.
I think you are thinking about it way too hard. Windows 11 is a dog. Constant hardware problems, slow, and frustrating UX. Is any desktop linux perfect? No, but its better than w11 right now.
No hardware problems in the version I run, not sure what version you use. It's also not frustrating for me but what I do get frustrated with is trying to get software to run and Linux but just won't work. Most people are smart enough to be able to use windows without getting frustrated.
That is the same thing many people using linux say. It not frustrating or have any issues.
So why are so many people complaining about Windows 11?
As a Windows user since 3.x days, I complain mostly about UX issues these days. It's also clear leadership is not aligned with what I want with my desktop.
I've hardly had hardware issues since I moved to Windows 2000. Sure some, but few enough I can't recall any in particular.
I take it you just read the first sentence and darted to the reply button...
Or GP knows that anyone who finds the following appealing has already been using linux for years:
> Do we want our fundamental computing environment to be ultimately under our control, or controlled by private interests with their own incentives?
But if windows is now objectively worse than linux, normal people also now have a reason to switch.
The problem I see with most people is that it just doesn't occur to them that there are alternatives. They're so used to a shitty experience with Windows and MS apps, and to them there's no such thing as os" and "hardware", in their minds they're lumped together.
So they shrug, say "meh, computers, I just can't understand them," and go on their merry way rebooting Windows for the 10th time that day.
Now, don't get me wrong, Windows has improved a lot from a robustness standpoint. Moreover, most people only use computers that come pre-configured, either from the factory or by their IT department. They won't face the crazy shit I have to put up with when I manually reinstall mine. Half the things on my 5 yo HP Elitebook don't work out of the box and I need to install a bunch of drivers from HP with dubious names, like sp1234 which makes the touchpad work, and sp4321 which enables the webcam. After a further set of updates, I can use my external screen connected to the intel integrated gpu and finally try to get some work done. Good times.
Frustrating UX? Nope. Slow? Nope. Constant hardware problems? Just no.
I've already switched to Linux, but this was not at all my experience of Windows. The only reason I switched was because Windows is going towards an "AI" focused OS which I do not want, as well as the cost of the Pro version - I run many VMs and not shelling out for Pro for all of them.
> hardware support isn’t always perfect
It's not perfect on windows either. Crashes, non working sleep on almost any windows laptop... at least compared to what Apple can do.
MS Office is hardly "niche professional software." I hate it, and recognize that I can use the online services, but the reality is that I have to send, receive, and work in this application and I can't easily do it on Linux.
> the reality is that I have to send, receive, and work in this application
Why? You can edit MS Office documents fine in LibreOffice and other similar software.
If you're working in a corporate environment, this may not be viable. LibreOffice is great software, but it's not 100% compatible. Things may look slightly different, get lost or otherwise cause problems. I've really tried, but at the end of the day I occasionally do need to use actual Microsoft Office.
Yep. And then there is Visio which gets used a lot where I work. LibreOffice Draw doesn't come anywhere near it. It saves a lot of grief just to give our Linux users a Windows VM with Office on it if they need to do any significant docs or drawings.
I used Word to write a reasonably complicated document that necessarily used tables. It was one of the most frustrating, bug inducing experiences of my life. I had to open the document and edit it in LibreOffice to get any sort of stability.
How do I join a live editing session of an Excel file with several people using regular Excel with LibreOffice?
I can't.
Or the same with PowerPoint.
I can't.
In a modern workspace it's not just local software running solely on just your local machine emailing around files or clobbering changes in some corporate file share.
Check out WinApps.
This looks interesting, how is the experience?
>niche professional software may lack native support
Microsoft Office is not "niche professional software"
What is Microsoft Office? Do you mean Microsoft 365 Copilot?
Well played sir. Well played
I suspect the person you are responding to wasn't including everything that doesn't work on Linux, in particular Microsoft Office, in this phrase, but domain specific / specialized business software.
I have two Windows systems; I use LibreOffice on them. It's just so much better.
> But these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations so much as ecosystem and investment gaps
For people who are trying to get their work done now, in the present, this doesn’t change anything. We all know that Linux could technically run the same productivity apps and games if every company put enough investment money toward it. However even some of the apps I use which had a Linux version have announced that they’re sunsetting Linux compatibility due to low demand.
For all of the people whose work lives inside of text editors, web browsers, and terminals switching to Linux is easy. I think these threads become biased toward people who fit that description who don’t understand why everyone can’t just switch over.
> Viewed through the lens of digital autonomy and citizenship, the question isn’t simply “Is Linux perfect?” but rather:
That feels like a strawman argument. Most people don’t choose their OS on ideological grounds. The reasons people don’t use Linux isn’t because it’s not “perfect”. People use Windows because it works, it’s familiar, and their software runs on it. All of these calls to make OS choice about ideological wars isn’t convincing or even relevant to people who haven’t already switched to Linux.
This is an clarifying perspective. In particular, I think this sheds light on understanding the various perspectives in the thread:
> Viewed through the lens of digital autonomy and citizenship, the question isn’t simply “Is Linux perfect?” but rather: Do we want our fundamental computing environment to be ultimately under our control, or controlled by private interests with their own incentives?
We make choices, become passionate about some, and wear values we feel strongly about on our shoulder. What we witness here, I believe, is a conflation of two things:
A: Linux as a value: Representing open source software, rejecting bad corporate behavior, and as a philosophy for software ownership
B: Linux as a collection of related operating systems, as practical software.
I think trying to understand each person's perspective, and if it can be categorized as one or the other makes sense of this article, similar ones, and discussion. Someone in Category B evaluating operating systems as tools should not be viewed by someone in Category A as an affront to their identity. It may just be different use cases; different hardware; different priorities; different variants and versions of operating systems used.
The people who wanted A created B. It's not really a conflation but more of a causal reality.
Yes but the headwinds of Linux adoption are (to some extent) that Linux is the best choice for A, but it is not far and away the best choice for B (not saying it’s bad or even worse than Windows, it’s just not CLEARLY better).
But when you approach 99% of the population who, to the extent they’ve even thought about it, will only judge an OS on B, Linux is just one of 3 main choices (sorry BSD folks. Don’t yell at me). Is it the best choice purely on functionality and app ecosystem? Maybe, but also maybe not.
Since the majority of Linux does not come on hardware by default what you’re essentially asking people to do is to buy a car and swap out the motor. We have to convince them why that new motor is better and is worth the effort of doing so. If it’s marginally better or worse, it just won’t be worth the headache to most people.
To be clear Linux (and MacOS) are my preferred OS. I haven’t owned a Windows box in at least 5 years.
Some desktop versions of GNU/Linux have rough edges. Self-important grognards think everyone should "git gud" and install Arch or waste a weekend waiting for Gentoo to compile in order to optimize the install. This article along with this one (https://www.theverge.com/tech/858910/linux-diary-gaming-desk...) go on about using an Arch-based distro rather than a Debian-based distro.
Clearly there will be challenges, minor or major.
The failure of these articles is the authors aren't going for distros that "just work". Want to undercut Microsoft's user base, grow GNU/Linux, and herald the year of Linux on desktop that's been promised for decades? Keep it simple.
Majority of people going online with their computers are browsing the web, doomscrolling, and engaging on social media. They're not pentesting with Rust, running an instance of a LLM, or setting up a webserver for giggles.
Keep it simple.
But pushing Arch and other beardy distros with these kinds of articles reeks of gatekeeping as if only "smart" people are allowed to engage online and control their experience. Everyone else should suck it up with Microsoft having Copilot phone home since they don't deserve to know better. And I don't care how much preamble they give about Debian-based and beginner distros, they're just wagging their dicks to easily-awed proles and relishing imagined egoboos from other neo-Stallmans.
Will these issues with Linux ever be overcome?
I want to switch but I just don't feel confident yet, and I wonder how long the "yet" will remain.
> Will these issues with Linux ever be overcome?
As a Linux user forced to run Windows at work, I only see issues with Windows ;)
> I want to switch but I just don't feel confident
Live distros make it very easy to dip your toes and try, without committing to anything.
IMO Linux has much better UI options because there are so many choices and freedom.
You can likely find something that looks/works EXACTLY like you’ve always dreamed of - but maybe you have to try a few options to find it.
Here’s a simple decision tree:
Do you run any exotic hardware? Do you run MS Office regularly? Do you run any highly specialized software?
If the answer is no to all those then Linux is worth a shot.
It isn't an issue with Linux, it's an issue with the companies that make proprietary software and devices with only windows support. A better world is possible, but you need to accept the fight isn't easy. Switch today.
> … desktop Linux still has rough edges …
My personal pet peeve is the GTK/Qt divide. Theming has an extra step, as you have to pick a matching theme for the other toolkit apps you inevitably end up using.
KDE/Qt has excellent scaling support, but GTK apps (OrcaSlicer for example) end up having blurry text or messed up text labels if you run a non-integer scaling resolution.
The Wayland transition almost seems akin to the IPv6 debacle. Support is there, but it’s half-baked in half the cases. I crave RDP remote access, but this is currently not possible with KRDP as it does not work with Wayland sessions. Wine is just getting there, but only with scary messages that say that it’s an experimental feature.
>> … desktop Linux still has rough edges …
> My personal pet peeve is the GTK/Qt divide. Theming has an extra step, as you have to pick a matching theme for the other toolkit apps you inevitably end up using.
Is this perhaps an issue of fractional scaling? I’ve run Openbox/Blackbox on Linux for ~15 years and never had these issues. Not 100% sure I understand the issue at least.
Things look mostly fine (to me) and even if they don’t, the apps still work as they should (no blur). AFAIK Openbox/X11 just uses the DPI the monitor reports and things scale as they should.
Sounds like an issue with Gnome/KDE to me, not with Linux?
I may be wrong, I’m not seeking a super polished look or want to tweak my UIs a lot.
> Do we want our fundamental computing environment to be ultimately under our control, or controlled by private interests with their own incentives?
The reality is a lot more nuanced than that. Should one live in a forest, devoid of any city services and company of other individuals, so that one may be under "own control"? This is the essential value proposition with Linux and it's no wonder many prefer the comforting institution of proprietary prisons^Wsystems.
Not everything that runs on windows is proprietary I use a lot of open source software on Windows myself. Windows is also a lot easier to configure to run exactly the way I wanted to run and to be the OS I need it to be. It's extremely customizable and easy to control. It's also modifiable in many many more ways.
Nobody cares about what runs under the hood (I mean the real market, not the dozen of us nerds), as long as it looks and plays nice. Market already uses linux both in the form of android but also as a server OS. For both of these the financial incentive was there for someone to write the drivers, make the UI user friendly (android users never have to open a terminal), create sales channels.
Desktop and laptop market is weird because no hardware vendor wants to compete with MS. The only one who does (apple), owns both the hardware and software as well as sales channels, so they are not affected by MS’s deals.
Fusion360 is the one tool I wish had better wine support
Yeah but folks around here like to stick their heads in the sand when reminded that this is a very real and concerning barrier to adoption of desktop Linux. It could happen 1000 times and they’ll still scream that it’s either user error or even worse “it works on my machine”.
Until the Linux community stops pretending and accepts that these are real issues and they need addressing, it will never be the year of the Linux desktop.
Maybe not for everyone, but it will never be the year of the Windows Desktop for everyone either.
It was, some 25+ years ago.
I would argue that hardware support in Linux is superior to any other operating system on the planet.
> But these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations so much as ecosystem and investment gaps, areas where community projects, standards efforts, and wider adoption could drive improvement without sacrificing freedom.
Are you sure? My second-hand thinkpad still won't hibernate properly. It's not a weird model, it's a ryzen-based X13 Gen1 so not even shiny new. You can imagine on a laptop one would want hibernation to just work.
The fault is surely on Lenovo's table... Yet it would work if I was to run Windows (which I don't want to do).
So yeah... Now I have a laptop from a brand which is known and appreciated for linux compatibility, and a basic thing like hibernation does not work.
> You can imagine on a laptop one would want hibernation to just work.
Well, I think MS took care of that by removing the hibernation option from the start menu. You have to manually turn it back on from the old control panel.
I'll be glad if someone tells that I'm wrong but doesn't current windows 11 present even more of the same challenges? Last I tried, old driver compatibility in newer windowses was not fantastic, Wine slowly is becoming more compatible with legacy windows programs than the windows itself, forced updates are dealbreaker for many usecases. And need for workaroubds and poking around has reached Windows XP levels.
I mean, there are two ways to make Linux better alternative than Windows, and currently the main effort is coming from Microsoft...
I have...
I switched to Bluefin, which is a branch of Universal Blue, which is flavour of Fedora. Sounds complicated, but in fact is the best thing to ever happen to Linux. I get all the ease of use of something like macOS but pre-built with tools for development like distrobox, and then I can just build my dev environments and get shit done in no time, without having to worry about breaking updates or nuking the whole file system because my bash sucks.
Its Linux for babies, and it makes me happy.
=====
Further ass-kissing:
Also I forgot to mention I tried gaming on it via Steam and it works like a charm... Not so sure about bleeding edge AAA games since I don't play any of that, but at least for all my oldies it works just fine.
Oh!, and the one thing I miss is Affinity Designer.
> Oh!, and the one thing I miss is Affinity Designer.
While I haven't experimented with it that much yet, Affinity (the new one, the one after the Canva acquisition) does work in Wine 10.20.
Now, I won't say it is a smooth experience, one of the workarounds that I needed to do is use Wine's virtual desktop so Affinity's tooltips are rendered correctly instead of being pure black, and the GUI does seem to not render correctly sometimes (it renders as white until something causes a redraw).
The Canva global marketing lead did say that Linux support is "being discussed seriously internally": https://techcentral.co.za/affinity-for-linux-canvas-next-big...
This makes you wonder: How hard it could be for a business that already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch the application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle the application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux support"?
Wine has some gaping holes in some of its API implementations. Direct2D, for instance, has existed since Windows 7 but is badly implemented in Wine -- there is no antialiasing and the ArcTo() function draws a line. The MS documentation is not that great either, so fixing Wine isn't necessarily easier than porting to native.
Yeah, the 80/80 rule. That made me smile.
> This makes you wonder: How hard it could be for a business that already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch the application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle the application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux support"?
CodeWeavers (developers of CrossOver and one of the main contributors and sponsors of Wine and related tools) actually offer something like this as a paid service for companies called PortJump:
https://www.codeweavers.com/portjump
Getting it running in linux is the easiest part dev wise.
It is the rest of the iceberg that causes problems.
- You need your support to be able to support linux which means they will need training and experience helping people in an entirely new system
- Linux comes in finite but vastly more combinations than OSX and Windows which means you are probably going to need to pick something like Ubuntu or struggle with the above
- Gotta track bugs in twice as many places
- Need CI / CD for more platforms
etc
>- Linux comes in finite but vastly more combinations than OSX and Windows which means you are probably going to need to pick something like Ubuntu or struggle with the above
This is easily solvable by distributing the app via a distro agnostic mechanism, like as a Flatpak or AppImage. Using Flatpak also eliminates the need for rolling their own app update mechanism.
But most of those issues are because Linux doesn't have enough market share. No one brushes off Windows because they need to support Windows and they need to add CI/CD for Windows.
The combination issue is a real issue though that (as far as I know) is mostly solved with Flatpaks, or in case of games, by using the Steam Runtime.
Of course, it is a "chicken and egg" problem of "we don't want to support Linux because there aren't enough users using it" but "we don't want to use Linux because there aren't enough business supporting it".
Thankfully with improvements in Wine the need of having "native" Linux support is shrinking, but at the same time there is still a looooong way to go (like the issues I said before with Affinity).
And then people wonder, why electron became a thing.
This. OMG Affinity is the ONE piece of software I actively miss. I tried the wine setup for it and it just doesn't work to a usable extent.
Yeah, I thought that Affinity would work pretty well in Wine because I've seen a lot of people pointing to the "just follow the guide (AffinityOnLinux repo) and it will work!" but in my experience it didn't work that well as people were saying.
And the guide itself seems to be outdated, the guide says that you need to install some stubs/shims but doesn't say that happens if you don't do it (I think that it would crash) but at least in my experience it did "work" without them when using an up-to-date Wine version.
Sadly Photoshop also doesn't work, if you want to follow the rules and use Creative Cloud it won't work at all, if you decide to sail the seven seas and download an older Photoshop version it will work but it also has some annoying bugs (sometimes the canvas doesn't update after an edit until you try to do another edit).
Don't get me wrong I do think that Wine is an amazing project and I hope that it continues to improve, but sometimes people don't seem to actually point all the issues that it exist when running an application in Wine.
> This makes you wonder: How hard it could be for a business that already has a 80% working application via Wine to patch the application/Wine to make it work 99+%, and then bundle the application with Wine and say that it has "native Linux support"?
I've had cases where running an app under wine worked better than the native linux port :/
Not that there aren't trust issues with bigger projects but don't folks worry that the further down the "branch of a flavour of of a branch of a flavour" chain they go the higher and higher the risk of someone sneaking nefarious code through becomes? I guess there's a natural barrier in that the lesser known code bases become less of a target.
Sometimes I just find it wild with how much we talk about containers and sandboxes for the user space code we run that there's still regular recommendations for the random distro of the week published by who knows who.
Bluefin, Aurora, and Bazzite are taking over my home.
I've been using desktop linux since before ubuntu, and I have never had so much confidence in my linux rigs. They are dependable, which is refreshing after boot-breaking updates have ruined my setups before.
As another anecdote in favor of Universal Blue's approach. My mother (who can't use a computer but to check email or regular websites) has been swapped to Aurora and has nothing but positive feedback.
Been 90 days with zero issues.
To be fair, the people who barely use the computer are the easiest to move to Linux. As Mental Outlaw said, "to a normie, an OS is just a bootloader for Google Chrome". If all you do is check emails, it doesn't really matter what OS you have installed.
Switching to Linux hasn't been an issue for those users for a long time - it's usually gamers, users of professional software, or IT people with deeply established workflows who have troubles
I guess the only part that matters is updates, and atomic systems like Fedora Silverblue do allow you to enable automatic updates without the fear of breaking everything, which is great
Laptop battery life suffers greatly on Linux. When their Google Chrome bootloader is out of battery all day, it matters which OS they installed.
Doesn't matter though. Every single one of these "casual" users I know has a terribly outdated device with a broken battery that doesn't even charge anymore.
And I agree: if it works, why replace it?
People who care deeply about unplugged battery life aren't on Windows to begin with.
This doesn't make much sense, ChromeOS is itself Linux, and those are prime "computers for parents" machines.
When my dad (83) was looking to replace his ancient Win7 Dell PC I convinced him to buy a MacMini since he's had an iPad for a long time, and more recently an iPhone.
Initially he was concerned about the "new" interface after using Windows since 3.11 days, but within an hour he was happy doing his usual "basic tasks" (email, basic Excel, Word for letters, printing, etc). He was amazed both his printers (colour/scanner, b&w) worked with zero hassle after simply plugging them in.
Now he loves the ability to FaceTime anyone in the family (kids, grandkids, etc.) at the click of a button using the webcam plugged into the Mini, and really enjoys the sync of photos, emails, notes, etc.
I think he would have really struggled with Windows 11 so I was tempted by an older-person friendly Linux distro if macOS wasn't an option.
I thought about mentioning my mom, since she's been my number 1 tech support client since ever... And I was going to say that, I am so certain of how solid this distro is, that I would even install it on my mom's laptop without any hesitation.
I've not heard of Universal Blue before, so thank you both for mentioning it! Seems like a great step forward for Linux Desktop!
> The current Linux desktop didn't get us there, but we believe that what was made, can be unmade.
This is a strange thing for them to say when they are pretty much a clone of Fedora Silverblue, with a few minor tweaks.
If Bluefin works for you, great. But I find their marketing rather pretentious.
I have an old pc lying around and will be installing bluefin today. Thanks for the inspiration.
Keep an eye on the Graphite vecor app that's in development. It's Linux native I think.
I was originally blown away by Bazzite, which I run on my Legion Go, but then I discovered uCore (https://github.com/ublue-os/ucore) and haven't looked back! Running it on my homelab and multiple servers at work, its a wonderful server OS.
How does bluefin compare to Linux Mint? I ask because I always thought mint was Linux for babies.
I'm currently working on converting an ARM Chromebook to run a different userland from ChromeOS and have been wondering which distro to use. I've starting getting Nix on it, but I think I'll switch over to Bluefin based on your recommendation.
I’m so close to the switch myself for silly reasons. I don’t like windows due to their creepy business practices and negative design patterns in their OS so I’m very bias against it. Forcing copilot is just the latest in their creepy practices…
For more details on why I came close to switching: I use my win desktop as a host for ai services such as Comfy UI for stable diffusion generation since it is a beefy platform; for example, I generate reference stuff for Krita (digital painting software) illustrations on my drawing tablet. I remember the process to configure windows as being strange, GUI bound (NOT windows strong suit), and just annoying due to my aforementioned bias. Valve has done great work with running games on linux which is the only reason I keep that OS and I’d rather set up services on linux.
This comment serves as a reminder to myself that I should just go ahead grab my windows license keys for archival purposes and flash a better OS on that system.
Don't forget that Krita has home-turf advantage on Linux :)
Krita is among the main reasons why I am so impressed with the KDE project. Not only do they deliver a very good desktop environment, but they also deliver some genuine flagship apps for it
As does Wacom. My drawing tablet from 2002 is plug-and-play with zero driver installation.
There's nothing silly about those reasons.
I call it silly because essentially I’m complaining that I don’t like setting up a service on an OS I don’t normally set up services for. My quibbles with that process can in part be addressed by crafting a terminal based workflow to configure the host and enable the service on my desktop, skipping the GUI completely. E.g. I’m sure I can do Task Scheduler shenanigans through powershell. More experience would help sand down the rough parts I experienced.
Now the product decisions behind the OS giving me the icks… The terminal can’t (completely) help with that ^_^
Eh those applications can both be run in linux without issue.
They are likely to have more issues related to getting the drawing tablet configured correctly.
The rest is just having to start from scratch and lose the decades of windows experience and intuition which can make things painful as that type of thing cant be replaced without time.
Do you have reference for the krita+comfyui setup? I have a drawing tablet and always wanted to augment drawings using AI but never got around to deploying a stack for that. I have a 3090 that should be enough for it, I just need a reference for the setup.
Copilot is already great and it's only getting better. I can get so much more work done and the same amount of time or get the same amount of work done in a lot less time. It's funny how many people were afraid of AI. Technophobes abound in this world
Funny, I disagree. I think copilot truly sucks compared to the other options. But you can uninstall copilot, so I don’t see why it bothers people at all.
I recently started using Lutris for gaming in Linux, and so far so good.
Having just yesterday installed a fresh Mint distro on a newly received PC that came with Windows pre-installed, I can tell you that this is merely an hour of work, and most of the time will be spent downloading and burning the .iso on the USB key.
You should just give it a go tonight.
Yep, once I read microsoft was going to integrate that abomination co-pilot into the taskbar and desktop in general, I wiped my windows partition for good. I didn't even back anything up. I have fedora servers at work, but I just need a stable and performant OS at home to do some remote work, hobby coding, and connect to some telescope equipment. So I just run Ubuntu LTS - why? because I don't need to spend my time nerding out on ricing a linux distro, I have better things to do with my time. The same goes for Windows, I have better things to do than try to get an operating system to work - and there lies the big rub. Linux is easy enough now for anyone who is decent at windows to learn and use, and it's free, upgradable, tons of support available, and WORKS BETTER.
As I'm typing this, on my work windows PC, the taskbar icons aren't rendering. Generally the graphics are slow, Microsoft outlook randomly freezes my entire computer, and occasionally my USB drives turn on/off if I'm plugged into a docking station. I experience exactly zero of these issues when running
In 2012 I borked my Windows 7 install by messing with the registry. I then used an Ubuntu live disk to back up my data. Then I reinstalled Windows 7, but when I couldn't access the internet because I hadn't installed the ethernet driver I had a thought: 'that Ubuntu thing didn't need me to install an ethernet driver to access the internet'. So I decided to install Ubuntu instead and I've been using GNU/Linux exclusively since then. I switched away from Ubuntu when the Amazon lens controversy happened and eventually wound up bouncing between Arch and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
Everyone is talking about moving to Linux lately, it’s a bit of a trend. I wish they’d stop, for one simple reason: I’ve been using Linux exclusively (when I’m not forced to use macOS by work) for several years now, and I rather enjoy the lack of malware, spyware and other bullshit on the platform.
If the general public comes over this situation might end. Desktop linux isn’t a target right now because its niche, I’d prefer that didn’t stop.
Oh well. Maybe nothing lasts forever.
While I sympathize with this angle, there's another side to this coin: if more people do the switch, maybe some applications will finally get linux versions.
I'm a Sunday photographer and quite like Lightroom and Photoshop (I know about the drama, but to me, I get enough value from them compared to Darktable and the GIMP to not switch just yet). It's the only reason I still have a windows pc hanging around the house.
I am in a similar boat; my media editing machine ruined windows 10 so that I can use Lightroom. But I would dearly love to ditch windows so I'm currently looking to try out running Lightroom under Winapps to see if it is usable. There's no way of passing the GPU through without something like SR-IOV so I'll have to see how it goes.
https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
I was thinking of doing that, but since that would require me to switch the monitor and whatnot, it would be just like using two PCs. And since I only use my desktop for LR and not much else, jumping through the hoops with emulation doesn't make much sense.
There's a lot of servers running Linux that are regularly targeted by malware.
There is a big difference in what software a desktop user runs versus what runs on a server, but the great thing about Linux is that you can keep just as much variation between your install and the average desktop user.
Your best bet for security is probably running OpenBSD, but within Linux, if you avoid common optional applications and services like Gnome, KDE, pulseaudio, systemd, etc., you'll have a significantly different attack vector. Avoiding Python and Node package managers and sticking to your distribution's package manager would be great, too.
Thanks, and that probably is a good security posture, but having to stop using everything good and switch to OpenBSD is exactly what I want to avoid!
I bought a thinkpad X1 carbon refurbished for about ~$300. I wanted to travel abroad with a laptop I wouldn't mind getting stolen if it happened. During the installation of Win11 it asked me to create a microsoft account, fuck that. I installed linux mint. Very nice experience overall, so nice to not get assaulted by ads in the start menu. Pleased to see the nightlight functionality (I googled f.lux for linux and that's how I discovered it) is built-in, and with flatpack I installed vlc, qbittorrent and obsidian. Firefox setup was straightforward. And that was it. This is a laptop for youtube and movies, I used the pre-installed libre office calc for small budget things and list making. It just worked for me.
The things that bother me about this laptop are primarily hardware related coming from using a mac laptop (which is the laptop I would mind getting stolen). Trackpad on X1 carbon is definitely not as good, battery life not as good. And opening the lid momentarily reveals what you were on before the lock screen comes on. This last one tastes more like a software issue. I had another issue with the hdmi port being finicky, but that's hardware again.
Overall very happy with this setup, linux mint is in great shape. I do wish there were fewer distro choices for people considering making the switch. It does introduce choice paralysis. I had to set aside my ego and pipe dream aspirations of being a "hacker" and went with a distro that seemed to be simple and straightforward to setup. Mint definitely is easier to install than windows, hands down, no need to create a microsoft account and you don't have to deal with all the slop features it tries to shove down your throat.
These articles... I'm not sure who are the target audience, because I am definitely not and I don't know anyone who is. Specific OS is not the important, anything with modern KDE is good enough to replace Windows 10/11.
But do I (and all my colleagues) need Microsoft Office (Word, Excel at least) and/or Drawing software (Adobe or something) and/or god forbid Visual Studio 2026, and some other corporate software to make a living? Inevitably yes.
I have a Mac laptop, a Linux workstation, and a Windows workstation for different purposes and I use them all. I agree. Every time someone says they switched OSes and they don’t miss anything, it’s revealed that 90-100% of their work was in generic outlets like the web browser, terminal, e-mail, and Slack.
To be fair, that could cover a lot of people.
In my experience watching people make the switch in the real world, the failure point is either the last 10% of software that they actually need, or the first time they encounter some Linux quirk that they didn’t expect. Then it reaches a point where there isn’t really any upside for people who aren’t ideologically motivated and who don’t get triggered by Windows 11 design choices or occasional pop-ups.
I have some specific engineering software that must run on Windows, period. I’ve gotten flak from the software engineers at every company whenever it’s discovered that my second machine is Windows, but outside of software devs nobody else questions it. Using Windows for work is perfectly understood by most other disciplines
Windows pop-ups can all be turned off. I have them all turned off on my machines and nothing pops up anymore. Windows is extremely customizable and modifiable and it runs 100% of Windows software which is most of the software being produced in the world today.
The only reason I'm not using Linux on my work-provided computer is due to the security software. None of it runs on Linux, it only runs on Windows and MacOS. Glad I don't have to use any software that only runs on Windows to do development. Hopefully the security software will someday support Linux.
Target audience is probably especially anyone not in the US?
It is beginning to look a lot like war is brewing between Europe and the US over Greenland. US media working super hard to make an "acquisition" sound reasonable and "FreedomTM".
Windows 11 is actually less annoying in the EU than in the US, thanks to the DMA.
I don't believe a "war" is brewing.
If and that is a big if, Trump were to get Greenland, there is not much that Europe can do in any case. Maybe a few politicians will go on X/twitter and complain but every country in the EU knows that they are no match for the US military and I am saying that as someone who lives in the EU.
I suppose the EU could go after big US tech companies but since most of Europe's needs are covered by the very same companies, I don't think this would be viable solution either and let's be honest the EU people are not just going to switch to Ubuntu tomorrow morning.
It's unfortunate but it's the reality.
> If and that is a big if, Trump were to get Greenland, there is not much that Europe can do in any case.
Whether or not that's true, that doesn't mean they won't try anyway. Pride sometimes beats pragmatism. I think it's foolish to dismiss the possibility of war, been if you believe it will be one-sided.
France has nukes and the only shoot first, ask questions later nuclear stance in the world.
I would advise Americans not to do anything stupid.
>No match
The EU can just kick out the US bases and forbid Mastercard and Visa working here. ASML? Good luck for Intel; I'm sure AMD would have its asses already covered and found some alternative in Asia.
Watch the Dow Jones collape in minutes.
On GAFAM, there are alternatives, and libre software it's libre for the whole world, not just the US.
Software it's easily replaceable except for die hard industrial DOS (where FreeDOS experts would cover) and some special XP/w9x era machinery. European hardware, the industrial one... there's no alternative in the US. No one.
If the US army steps on Greenland in order to seize it, it's the end of the American economy.
China and Russia? These two should watch the Bering currents and South Asian quakes first; the upcoming ones will be a nightmare due to ice meltings.
>Watch the Dow Jones collape in minutes.
>it's the end of the American economy.
You assume that this is not the goal of the current US "leadership". They want the country to fail, so they can rule over the ashes. They are a lot more fucked up in the head than you probably think they are. They simply don't care what happens, so long as they are the ones in power.
Trump would love nothing more than to dissolve NATO, and isolate from all of the EU. He would see that as an accomplishment. I wish I were joking.
I love you guys, and I wish you were right, but I don't think you are.
Any of the above moves (military bases, Visa/MC, ASML, etc) would make the US suffer, but it would collapse the EU. Europe has a decade or two of hard work and crippling costs to significantly disengage from the US, and no one has the vision or fortitude to make that happen.
You also wouldn't have any security. If you disengage from the US militarily (whatever's left of "NATO"), we'll all see how far Russia can project power. Not as far as they'd like, but enough to make life miserable in a half-dozen or more current-NATO countries. Which puts pressure on their neighbors of course. This would be a shooting war in the east, which would require central and western European countries to decide whether they want to spend blood and treasure to respond. "No" kicks the can down the road a few years, "Yes" is economically devastating.
China could step in! It's a long way from China to the Mediterranean and North Atlantic, and their naval power is ... thin, currently. But you don't want China to step in. They could send money, but then they'd own you worse than the US even fever dreams about owning you.
The US seizing Greenland would be a terrible thing for the world, but I think the most likely outcome is that there would be complaints from the EU countries at highest level and volume, and a handful of countries would get legislation through to make the US suffer, but it would fail at the EU level, maybe even split the EU into two factions of American-bully-reluctantly-aligned countries vs American-bully-righteously-andor-selfservingly-opposed countries. The instability would last a few years, maybe a decade, and then we'd be back to where we are now, with "Greenland (US)" replacing "Greenland (DK)" on maps, but otherwise no one would spend much time thinking about it.
And the stomach-turning irony is that all of this is completely unnecessary. The US has a compact of free operation in Greenland already, including military operations. This is just an exercise in establishing dominance (i.e. The End of Politeness). There are some administrative details like mineral rights and redrawing international exclusivity zones (watch out Canada), but those are not very important when the global economic machine is working properly.
The rhetoric here in the US is that RU and CN are waiting to pounce on Greenland already, and that if we don't, they will. I honestly don't know if there's even a shred of truth to that -- it sounds like absolute manufactured BS to me (RU isn't strong enough to hold it, and CN can't project at that distance), but I have a strong anti-trusting bias against liars who lie, and those are the people dominating the conversation on this side.
The next ten months in the US will decide the next fifty years of the world. On a personal level, that's the rest of my life, and I'm worried about it.
I wish wisdom, resilience, and peace, for all of us.
> Any of the above moves (military bases, Visa/MC, ASML, etc) would make the US suffer, but it would collapse the EU
And many other places - most countries depend in US tech and increasingly so (recent NH stories about Vietnam mandating banks only use unrooted mobile phones). Just card payments not working would be an economic disaster. So would closing down all the businesses and services that rely on AWS, GCP and Azure. So would whatever the US chose to do through Apple, MS, and Google OSes.
> we'll all see how far Russia can project power. Not as far as they'd like, but enough to make life miserable in a half-dozen or more current-NATO countries. Which puts pressure on their neighbors of course. This would be a shooting war in the east, which would require central and western European countries to decide whether they want to spend blood and treasure to respond
I am more optimistic than you about this. Russia is struggling just against Ukraine. They might just invade the Baltic states but anything more would force Western Europe to commit and the Russians know this. Even in Ukraine they invaded because we had signalled we would do nothing by not responding to the previous invasion of Ukraine, to threats to invade and previous Russian invasions of other countries.
> The rhetoric here in the US is that RU and CN are waiting to pounce on Greenland already, and that if we don't, they will. I honestly don't know if there's even a shred of truth to that - RU isn't strong enough to hold it, and CN can't project at that distance
If Greenland becomes independent in a few years time would it then become more of a threat?
> RU isn't strong enough to hold it, and CN can't project at that distance
China is building its armed forces, and there are ways of getting a country within your sphere if influence short of invasion.
> I wish wisdom, resilience, and peace, for all of us.
We all do but I think we are living in a new cold war.
> This is just an exercise in establishing dominance (i.e. The End of Politeness).
I agree.
It's a way to assert dominance and the EU countries are partially responsible for the state of things.
I mean, when you outsource your manufacturing capabilities to China, your tech services to the US and your security to NATO, then it frees up a lot of cash to spend on other things and that is probably why life in the EU is pretty good.
Unfortunately the other side of this coin is that it leaves you completely unprepared if/when things change quickly.
> Europe has a decade or two of hard work and crippling costs
Once again unfortunately, many EU countries are already maxing out their budgets each year and running sky high deficits so there is not much dry powder to absorb these costs.
Raising more money through taxes is politically unpalatable when a lot of the EU countries are already in the top 10 of most taxed countries on the planet.
The only notable exceptions are Poland and Germany but they won't be able to carry the rest of the EU by themselves.
> maybe even split the EU into two factions of American-bully-reluctantly-aligned countries vs American-bully-righteously-andor-selfservingly-opposed countries.
The smallest EU countries have no choice. There is no EU army and therefore if the US leaves there is no one to replace it. It's a basic case of choosing the best worst outcome. Become a vassal of Russia or become a vassal of the US.
Again, Russia would need to fight harsh natural disasters first. If any, they will need us. Earthquakes due to ice melts and current flows will be no joke. Temperatures will be warmer in the Arctic, and a potential small war due to gas/resources/routes will happen, everyone knows that. But what no one speaks it's that the damn nature can crush any vehicle in between no matter if it's from USA, Europe, Russia or China. It will be scary and nature doesn't give a shit where are you from. Every base you set on either ice or the coast can be plummeted down due to a quake/tsunami in hours.
Also, back to economics. The inner European market can be huge. We have decent armies ourservers, too, among market with the whole Mediterranean, Africa and South America (Spaniards know how to do deals, no matter which political side). Oh, and don't forget China, the Chinese will love to sell us advanced tech at bargain price.
The US tries to set right wing sided mafias in LatAm, Europe tries to get good deals. The US needs to behave like gentlemen and not like thugs.
> The EU can just kick out the US bases and forbid Mastercard and Visa working here. ASML? Good luck for Intel; I'm sure AMD would have its asses already covered and found some alternative in Asia.
The EU uses Mastercard and Visa. If youblock them in the EU, you just cripple the EU economy instantly.
> On GAFAM, there are alternatives, and libre software it's libre for the whole world, not just the US.
How many people do you know that would be willing to switch to an alternative OS tomorrow or give up their Iphones?
> If the US army steps on Greenland
The US army is already on Greenland. They have a military base there.
I agree with you in spirit but in reality any countermeasures would inflict a lot of pain the EU as well. I don't think anyone has a crystal ball but whatever happens won't be good for anyone.
Yeah, I think it is naive of the grandparent to believe that iPhones, Android phones with Google Play Services, a lot of cloud services can be replaced overnight. That said, it might not happen overnight, but it will surely happen.
I feel like we are close to a tipping point where governments and companies will move off US services en masse as fast as they reasonably can. I think this movement already started. E.g. our local university has forbidden use of US (well, any non-EU) LLMs for work and are trialing Mistral. Two years ago they would have gone Gemini without thinking (since they are already using Google Workspace). They are also extending support for their Linux workspace, which has primarily been maintained for CS'y groups, but they want to be ready to roll it out when needed.
A lot of organizations (especially non-profits, universities, etc.) have woken up when Microsoft relinquished Microsoft 365 access of the ICC chief prosecutor overnight.
I guess one side effect of the US going rogue is open source getting a lot more traction.
I hope that the EU (and UK) will also invest heavily in iOS and Google Android alternatives, because that will be the hardest bits to replace, but as long as AOSP still exists it will be possible to bootstrap reasonably quickly.
Its going to be a very long time before it changes enough to do without US tech. How many European governments are encouraging the use of apps that only run on iOS and Android? How many critically important businesses like banks require customers run unrooted Android or IOS? HSBC's app will not even work if you install apps from F-Droid!
A few governments are trying to do something about reliance on the US, but they are also doing things that create greater reliance.
Its good your university is trying, but that sounds like a limited response. Do they use Windows? MS Teams? Google Drive?
I know of no government making serious attempts to get the private sector of US dependence. Just check how many things you use regularly run on AWS. Desktop Linux is great but is any governmentactually making consistent attempts to persuade businesses to switch to it?
Its going to be a very long time before it changes enough to do without US tech. How many European governments are encouraging the use of apps that only run on iOS and Android? How many critically important businesses like banks require customers run unrooted Android or IOS? HSBC's app will not even work if you install apps from F-Droid!
Step by step. For example, most Dutch banking apps work fine on GrapheneOS. Yes, still with Google Play Services, but at least they are sandboxed. It shows that there is a path to removing dependence incrementally. There are also a bunch of European phone brands (yes, most manufactured in China), like Nothing, Fairphone, Gigaset, HMD, etc. and at least one of them already supports alternative Android versions. Yes, I know they have issues, but you need to start somewhere.
Its good your university is trying, but that sounds like a limited response. Do they use Windows? MS Teams? Google Drive?
Yes, but they also have an official Linux workplace, last time I was there, you could choose to re-image a machine to run Linux on every machine. They are also trialing ownCloud.
The migration won't happen overnight, but it's good that they are setting up the alternatives, trialing them with small user groups, etc. It's the best way to prepare yourself.
I know of no government making serious attempts to get the private sector of US dependence. Just check how many things you use regularly run on AWS. Desktop Linux is great but is any government actually making consistent attempts to persuade businesses to switch to it?
I agree, not enough persuasion is done. But being gloomy is not going to help. Best is to trust in our own strength (we can do it), accept that the solutions are going to be worse (at least initially), make people aware of the risks and alternatives.
The whole situation sucks, but big changes also give rise to big opportunities and it is an opportunity to change to a more open, more privacy-friendly, more user-oriented, etc. ecosystem.
No, we know it would be the breaking-point for not acting. It will be a shooting war if the US tries it.
We don't need to annihilate the US forces, just make the US bleed enough to rethink this stupid shit.
I see this argument again and again, but I would imagine most people reading this have separate work and home computers?
For the average home user I can see gaming - while hugely improved in recent years - could still be a showstopper.
But surely for the average user Libreoffice or online versions of MS Office will suffice? Surely there cannot be _that_ many average PC users that need the full power of Photoshop?
Of course I expect the average HN user to be quite different from the average user in general, but I really do think that many casual users get no advantages from Windows apart from familiarity.
We really need to make LibreOffice much better. I am tired of Microsoft really.
This begs the question of who “we” are.
The people who want people to switch from Windows to Linux.
Maybe Windows should remain as a professional tool for using these applications. Most people don't need them. They need a web browser and not much else. Maybe some games for kids. Something like Ubuntu can serve those needs just fine. If you need VS for developing Windows apps, then you obviously stay on Windows.
“ They need a web browser and not much else.”
These people will probably use a tablet or phone.
Yes, but if they need to write a document, the larger screen and keyboard make it more usable.
Then they will attach a keyboard to their tablet. I think desktop OS for personal use is pretty much on the way out.
Yeah, but I guess part of the point is that MS themselves have been moving their desktop stack to the cloud making it even better for Linux users to maintain some degree of interoperability between the two OSs. I never particularly liked the Libre alternatives to Office, but now with 365 I can keep up with my colleges stack without having to switch to a VM or some other artifact just to collaborate on a document.
Drawing, yeah, true... design as well... closest the Linux world ever was to get something decent in the design department was the Serif/Affinity products, but they never made the port.
I guess it depends on your field, for the past ten years I've worked in companies that use Google workspace, google docs, google drive, etc, etc, and slack.
I've not had any lock-in to Microsoft software and I don't think I've deal with a .doc file in all that time. I need a terminal to run devops stuff, and emacs to write it with, but almost nothing else.
Artists, and so on, are probably tied to Adobe, etc. But random developers and sysadmins are certainly capable of switching I think.
Don’t all of these run in the browser nowadays?
While office can run in the browser, the browser version sucks and I commonly need to open the files in the desktop version. This often happens when there's a browser version or a mobile version or an app version. There's a lack of feature parity.
The browser versions (and the mobile versions) are nowhere near parity with the desktop Windows version, even in quite basic matters of styling. To be honest this annoyed me enough in the end that I just moved to a PandaDoc/CSS/PDF workflow and honestly I now have both a simpler editing process, and a more powerful engine for customisation.
The browser versions aren't as good as the desktop versions. And Googles alternatives aren't as good as Microsofts. Both do 60% of the job, which is probably enough for 80% of the people.
Only limited versions, and the usability downgrade is severe.
I don't think you'll ever see a web version of Visual Studio.
Is Visual Studio still relevant if you're not developing native Windows software?
I'm currently developing ASP.Net Core services and modern .Net is quite nice. Everyone around me uses absolutely free Visual Studio Community edition, so it would be weird to not use it.
> I'm not sure who are the target audience, because I am definitely not and I don't know anyone who is.
Are you all expected to provide your own personal hardware?
Maybe this depends on location, but everyone I can think of has a corporate-issued laptop on which their corporate software runs.
Not even remotely true.
You're making the exact same argument everyone here is making, and that's because you're attempting to argue from technical parity / superiority. Windows isn't the dominant desktop OS because of it's technical superiority to Linux, it's dominant because of deeply entrenched compliance and industry reasons.
Healthcare, finance, legal, engineering (less so today, but still very sub-discipline dependant), and government all have very specific software needs that no one in their right mind will bother writing new software, or rewriting existing software, would do for 6% desktop market share.
EMR programs (Epic, Cerner, Meditech), Practice management and billing, Tax and compliance, Legal discovery and case-management tools, Niche hardware and it's control software
This is all the realm of Windows. Most of these applications are Windows-only (Win32 / .NET / ActiveX legacy), they're only certified and validated on Windows, and they're only contractually supported on Windows.
Even if Wolters-Kluwer rewrote the entire CCH ProSystem fx suite for Linux, now there's recertification, regulatory review, vendor retraining, staff retraining, potential issues with auditors and regulators, etc.
There's currently no upside large enough to justify: Vendor finger-pointing, Compliance risk, Training costs, Downtime risk
It's negative ROI all the way down.
Windows has to become so bad that switching to Linux for desktops overcomes all of the above.
Every now and then a new article "Why you should go Linux". I get it, I like Linux too but every case is different. I want to use Linux but I have to use Digital Audio Workstation. So in my case, I shouldn't dump Windows (and thousand of $$ I've spent on audio software).
I know people desperately want to believe that Linux is "there", but it really isn't. And will probably never be. It’s still too confusing for the average user (many distros, many desktop environments, Wayland vs X, systemd vs init, snap vs flatpak).
> It’s still too confusing for the average user (many distros, many desktop environments, Wayland vs X, systemd vs init, snap vs flatpak).
Users don't need to know about any of that, except for picking a distro and just using whatever is there.
Regarding DAW - I get sticking with Windows if you have thousands invested in it. Even so, there's quite a bit of professional software out there with native support (like Bitwig) or flawless Wine support.
I'm fairly proficient when it comes to Windows, but the diversity in install methods for Fedora threw me for a loop, too. It seemed easier at first -- get all your software from trusted sources in the default package manager, just like an app store! But then there's the question of RPM vs. Snap vs. Flatpak vs. downloading an installer from their website, some versions being further behind than others, the method you use having implications for where/how programs are installed and maintained, etc. It adds cognitive friction and makes troubleshooting harder; I'm not even sure if there's a reliable way to see a list of all programs installed on your machine (regardless of method) or how to easily uninstall them. I don't regret switching, but it is an obstacle, and more consistently than the initial question of which distro to use.
They absolutely do, the moment you have any problem you are on your own. I spent half a day troubleshooting why nvidia drivers were not loading (mint was not signing them and secure boot silently kicked the module out), and I'm many times more proficient at technology than an average person.
I bought a brand new Dell laptop with Windows 11 25H2 at the end of November 2025. The first patches released by Microsoft in December did not install. WTF!!!
If you go online, you will see a whole YouTube videos and articles on how to fix the issue. Let me tell you, after a considerable amount of time, I gave up.
I'm running Ubuntu 24.04 on my desktop, and I can't remember the last time I had issues applying patches.
Windows has problems all the time. There is widespread knowledge on how to troubleshoot and fix these problems.
Similar problems will have very different solutions for Linux. The knowledge of how to resolve them is much less widespread. I’ve had very good success in asking ChatGPT how to resolve Linux issues, probably better success then I would on Windows because the error messages on Linux are much more detailed.
A lot of the time the "solution" to problems on Windows is to reinstall/in-place upgrade because, as you said, Windows errors tend to be more generic so you can browse Google all you want but none of the instructions people provide will be of much help. So I'm not sure "widespread knowledge" is a point in favor of Windows when the errors frequently aren't specific enough to be reliably actionable.
Windows has a "check the Internet for solutions" option that never works. You can just let Claude code loose on your system and have it go fix your shit for you instead of copy and pasting anything.
> (like Bitwig)
Been there, done that... worked fine but with an unacceptable performance penalty.
Reaper is just as good as FL Studio or Logic Pro. VSTs are really your biggest hurdle. Depending on how they are compiled, they may rely on platform specific code. Most big plugin makers have VSTs for all platforms though and your license works on all.
The pathway is there should you choose, one day. Linux is quite good now. That being said, I know a lot of niche plugins that some guy wrote that only works on windows because that’s all he/she has access to. Some 8-bit synth bitcrushers come to mind.
Also Steinburg made VST 3 sdk open source so you have a path to a free music production studio.
https://github.com/steinbergmedia/vst3sdk
"as good as" (debatable in the first place) isn't enough justification to switch. Everyone has their own workflows, settings etc that they used over many years, which they are not going to give up, just to "switch to Linux". This is about real loss in productivity.
Yes but readers may be reading and think that Linux isn’t capable. It is. There’s plenty of DAWs available. You can also use WINE with proton to run FL Studio on Linux. My suggestion is just that, a suggestion to explore the possible.
If we just learn one thing and never change then we wind up being left behind. While FL Studio and Logic, Cubase and Ableton are what most people know. There’s ways of running ALL of them on Linux.
> While FL Studio and Logic, Cubase and Ableton are what most people know. There’s ways of running ALL of them on Linux.
As I just managed to get VR working with HP Reverb G2 in my Linux environment, quite literally the only reason I have Windows still installed on my computer is because of Ableton, and not being able to run that properly on even workstation hardware.
How exactly do I get Ableton running with an external USB soundcard and everything running exactly like it runs on Linux? I'm quite literally ready to give you money if you manage to give me an answer that actually leads to me being able to run Ableton on Arch Linux, because for years I have tried, and waited for the moment it's possible. So please do tell, how do I get it running?
https://github.com/BEEFY-JOE/AbletonLiveOnLinux
https://hanez.org/document/ableton-live-linux-wine/
https://github.com/wineasio/wineasio
The biggest thing with any Linux and Wine mix for DAWs is using JACK and WineASIO for low latency
This doesn't work like everyone makes it out to. The first problem is overcoming the plethora of build errors. Then if you're lucky enough to actually get Ableton launched and working, you'll run into weird issues like Ableton crashing as soon as you attempt to add a MIDI track. When you find a work-around for that, you then run into random crashing in the middle of playback with absolutely atrocious latency despite the claims of "low latency". It's not worth it. I gave up
You can't, I've tried. The "passthrough" is bullshit, it doesn't fucking work and I wish people would stop recommending this time wasting "advice". That's not even the main issue as 90% of your VSTs will probably not work either and latency will be through the roof.
Windows VM with USB passthrough. I haven't had any issues with USB devices this way.
I've tried to passthrough Behringer audio interface, as well as HX Stomp (to, of course, avoid dual-boot) and it stuttered like crazy. Maybe there is a way to make it more "realtime" but it's not the default, at least in VirtualBox.
> VSTs are really your biggest hurdle.
And that is unfortunately the place where I spent my big bucks.
I do however use Linux for my work, and have for more than a decade. If all the plugins (plus FL Studio, I've tried Reaper but it might be not for me) worked, I'd switch my personal desktop in a heartbeat. It's honestly the only thing locking me to Win10. Maybe I'll try a Mac through work (we get to keep the machines).
And yes, I've tried running FL using Wine, and it works surprisingly well! Just not _well enough_, and some plugins do not work at all. Most do, and that's great, but not enough for me at least.
I still remember the first time I stumbled across Logic Pro X. For the price of $200 I got a complete package that contains about 200 plugins and instruments. The DAW itself was maybe 7% of the full contents of that package.
That is unbeatable value for money in the DAW market and that was before Logic Pro 11 came out and added a ton of new plugins.
I fully understand, that’s me and basically all those Native Instrument packs. You’ll have to pry guitar rig from my cold dead hands.
"As good as" is highly debateable. Have you used Logic Pro 11 in the past two years?
Yes, I own Logic Pro
It's not the apps, it's the drivers. I've got expensive high quality audio hardware (RME Fireface 800) that doesn't have Linux drivers. Oh sure, I could invest $2000 to get a newer version, but that would just mean a steep learning curve to get drivers, hardware, and DAW working anywhere near as seamlessly as my Windows setup. It's not that I'm a Windows fan, I'm just looking for the most cost- and time-effective solutions. I'd rather spend my time recording and making music than sweating over driver and software issues.
FireWire is dead. Apple moved on to Thunderbolt
I am a linux user for 26 years. And used windows since 3.11 up to 2005. After that point I just helped people with windows, never worked with it.
I had this friend while my kid went to school with his kid, he was a musician. He absolutely was frightened of even handling me the mouse of his windows 7 setup in case I break his DAW, cherry audio tools and midi mixers just by me showing him a website. Also helped to switch some dlls (hi didn't know how to kill background task to release dll to be replaced) and edit windows registry cause he needed an upgrade for some pirated software.
I have seen many more nightmarish stuff hapenning in windows, even on holy sacred windows xp.
On the other hand my mother has been using debian xfce in her acer touch screen laptop for 15 years. No issues. Many elder people got in shock when windows 8 made all those changes.
So whenever windows users talk about linux confusion I smirk.
> So in my case, I shouldn't dump Windows (and thousand of $$ I've spent on audio software).
If you mean that there's no Linux replacement for Digital Audio Workstation, then I agree: switching is not for you. But if what worries you are the $$ you have spent, you are just another victim of the sunk cost fallacy. The earlier you realize your mistake, the earlier you are ready to evaluate the options without biases.
most interesting part is to guess how many here complaining about a poor ecosystem on Linux audio, actually work professionally on the field
Surge-XT, Vitalium and/or PlugData or Cardinal can get you so far on the synthesis world that maybe not even a full dedicated lifetime can explore everything you can do with it... Ardour isn't a shinning pot for MIDI editor generational features but if you actually know music-theory, it works pretty solid for writing. the in-line editor makes very much sense, just like sheet music can hold an orchestra info. on a sigle page
I am not familiar with Digital Audio Workstation, but this seems a good use case for WinApps.
Ableton + Serum + many custom VSTs user here. You're spot on. This is actually the biggest reason I can't switch. In fact Steve Duda (creator of Serum) has said many times that he doesn't ever plan to support Linux. That's not a deal-breaker necessarily, but the fact we paid lots of money for this stuff makes it a bit unreasonable to switch to Linux.
I have Windows only audio and 3d software. I ended up with a windows VM with GPU passthrough on Linux. It sits on its own m2 drive for the rare occasion I need to dual boot. So Windows has been become legacy software for me. (IClone and CC).
And Steam Deck is there.
But I think the desktop interface is legacy for anyone under the age of 25, I get a kick out of watching them navigate a desktop.
There is no "there" for Linux to be, because
> every case is different
Every article like this is another person for whom Linux is there.
> t’s still too confusing for the average user (many distros, many desktop environments, Wayland vs X, systemd vs init, snap vs flatpak).
Average users need to buy hardware with a suitable distro installed. Usually that means Ubuntu. Its a decision that should be taken for them
With regard to DEs - Gnome for touch devices, KDE for mouse and keyboard driven ones. Both set up to be Windows like by default.
The average user is never even going to know whether they are running Wayland or systemd or snap. They will never change the default.
FLStudio in Wine, Bitwig and Reaper work amazing on Linux, Mixxx for DJing works with Traktor keyboards.
I guess it depends on your needs. 90% of my working life is a terminal to run terraform, emacs to write code, and slack to chat with colleagues. In each of the companies I've worked over the past 10 years I've had a google workspace account, and I think I've never even touched microsoft office in all that time.
Yes there are options. In practice you pick one distro, the one your friend recommends, or that the IT department gives you.
There are probably fields in which you cannot use Linux software, but for your average joe? It's not impossible, and it's not that confusing with a little patience.
I'm sure you mean Microsoft Copilot 365 App, not Office :D
I can't get over how they torpedoed one of the most famous brands in the world... but that's kind of on brand for them now, self-sabotage.
I did the same for my media centers! Netflix and iQIYI refuse to work. I am cancelling Netflix. Been a member since 2010. I don't need 4k either. The 4k tax is losing ownership over your media. HDMI is closed source compared to display port.
My media center experience is so so much better. The apps on roku logout randomly, the nvidia shield remote craps out, windows firefox/chrome are slow and the logitech keyboard doesn't work. But the same keyboard and browser setup works like a charm on the same machine on linux.
Manufactured waste, fight against general purpose computing and ownership is what is at stake.
You're all too generous. The first time Netflix didn't display past 720p in Firefox, I immediately cancelled my subscription (which was paying for the whole family) and redirected everyone to Bitsearch[0] to pirate everything instead. I don't agree the moral or ethical arguments against it either.
[0] Bitsearch uses a distributed hash table (DHT)[1] to find all public tracker content
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table
I'm a Linux users since 1999ish and I find extremely annoying and condescending these kind of titles.
What about "Hey! I tried Linux and it's cool! Let me show you!", instead?
If you must, Windows 11 Enterprise IoT LTSC is where the goodness is at. Less bloat, no ads, a frozen feature set (so they won't move your cheese every 6 months), 10 years of official support and security updates... it's like it's 1997 again! And you can install tools like Classic Shell (with its superior Start menu) to make it even better.
I have been using Linux exclusively for twenty years now. I don't understand people who use anything else, to be honest.
> I don't understand people who use anything else, to be honest.
Most people don't make their coffee in an Aeropress either.
I've also used Linux exclusively (in my case 25 years), but I also realize that with a few niche exceptions, there are few mass marketed products that feature the traditional Linux desktop as their primary UI.
Desktop OS UI is hard. It takes investment in technology, product, and marketing all focused on a target market. Even with all of those most upstarts have failed to gain traction. Also consider that most people buy laptops for 2 reasons: 1) browsing the web and if they can afford it 2) as a fashion accessory. People will put up with a lot of BS from a product if they feel like the product gives them social status and acceptance.
No Linux laptop really hits (2). Arguably only a few Windows laptops do either.
> Most people don't make their coffee in an Aeropress either.
Stupid analogy, the Linux version of that would be whatever french press you want to use. Buy your coffee ground or as beans and grind yourself, depending on preference. And for my girlfriend there's always the Starbucks equivalent (Debian stable with Gnome).
Apple would be picked by modern slaves and sold in a capsule at 100,000% markup and it only fits their machines. Windows comes with pesticides for the "benefit of the user".
I don't see how their analogy is stupid. Aeropress and french press are pretty similar from an "enthusiast coffee device" perspective. Lots of room for variability in grind size, coffee choice, and specific brewing technique with both methods.
Aeropress is a brand, one I've never heard of. It fits in the Linux ecosystem (maybe as one of the Red Hat flavors?) but as an analogy it is simplified. Linux is so much bigger than that and there's everything from LFS (grow, grind and brew with tools you've sourced and put together yourself), to Android (plain old drip machine). Reducing everything that's the Linux ecosystem to a niche brand of a specific type of coffee maker is dishonest.
I use a french press myself, and never heard of Aeropress. My machines all run Debian with DWM and I never have any problems. My non-technical girlfriend is fine on Debian and doesn't really know the difference. She did mention how fast her laptop boots though.
> I have been using Linux exclusively for twenty years now.
Ditto. I can't stand other OSs; they are constantly in my way for just the basic tasks.
> I don't understand people who use anything else, to be honest.
Anti-ditto. I would never give Linux to my parents. They're capable enough to maintain their own Windows computers, and switching them to Linux would mean that I'd have to take over all of those tasks -- because they've got other, more important things to do than to learn a new OS.
I'd agree with you if you could buy rando PC with Linux installed and working with no stupid hardware issues. People who can live in Google Docs/Office 365 web and don't have industry specific use cases will almost always be fine. But once you break out of that subset of people, tossing them a Linux machine can be kind of mean.
> Anti-ditto. I would never give Linux to my parents.
I don't know about your parents but most people (including my parents) just use a browser and some applications that are identical to their Windows versions or sufficiently similar. There isn't really anything new to learn.
I did give Linux to my dad and he used it fine for many years until my sister gave him a Windows laptop.
Most people just use an OS to start applications. There is nothing they need to learn other than maybe the start button has a different logo on it.
System76!
One huge barrier is printing. I've been using Linux as my daily OS for a decade and I still have stupid problems with printers. I can't print from my laptop because the printer spits out unicode garbage if I try. My desktop works, but sometimes I have to reboot to get the print queue to clear.
To be fair, I also have stupid problems with printers in all other OSes.
Printers are their own slice of misery that seem to transcend brand, OS, platform, etc.
I'm sure most people feel the opposite way. I've been using Windows and Macs for 20 years and I don't ever see myself ever using Linux as a desktop OS.
Among the subculture that would be the type to visit Hacker News (or Slashdot back in the day), this attitude emerged around 25 years ago. In the late 90s, there was widespread enthusiasm for the Linux desktop. I remember those days fondly. It was glorious. Then macOS (or OS X as we called it) swept away a lot of people. A lot of them would get hostile or angry or mock people when they would mention they didn't join the Mac bandwagon.
I have multiple computers with multiple operating systems, but I still need my gaming machine to be windows because some of my favorite games require it.
I agree.
However, most people do not know what an OS is. They do not understand its software rather than hardware.
Same here. Using Linux Mint for about 15 years now. Same for various computer illiterate family members. As far as I am concerned it is significantly more pleasant to use than Windows and MacOS.
Do you use a laptop? It seems that doing the right then when opening / closing the lid only happened in the past 5 years or so.
This is something I see repeated everywhere but I've been using Linux daily on all sorts of laptops for a little over 15 years and never struggled with this issue.
But during my brief period on Windows I would get issues like my colour settings changing or the behaviour of certain meta keys being switched out when I woke a sleeping laptop.
Certain versions of Ubuntu have this issue on Thinkpads, which requires updating a specific setting in Grub.
My colleagues run linux laptops and they don't struggle with this issue either. They just completely turn off their laptops anytime they want to move somewhere. That's how they trust their OS.
>> They just completely turn off their laptops anytime they want to move somewhere
Fine but that attitude isn't going to increase Linux adoption. Arch does work in this regard today but it does require some BIOS tweaks to get it to work flawlessly. Compare this to a MacBook where closing the lid always does the right thing and seems to use basically no power at all in this state. For me, I'll accept the trade-off as I don't want to use macOS (makes no sense for development imo) but some aspects of the experience are clearly superior.
This point is now moot since x86 broke sleep for everyone.
Some people are not allowed to use Linux.
At work, I got a fancy MacBook, and as much as I admire the hardware, I despise the MacOS window management. IMHO, it is broken by design, and I wonder how anybody at Apple considers this a good system. There is still a small chance that I didn't understand a crucial concept, but until now, nobody was able to explain to me, how it is supposed to work.
I have reached the point where I believe that it must be something historical, like Steve wrote it himself, or else, and now nobody dares to reform it.
Can you understand why someone would buy a $20 Mr. Coffee coffeemaker from Walmart and not a $2000 DeLonghi Eletta Explore superautomatic espresso machine?
have you tried to draw a circle with GIMP? /s
Yes but i usually use inkscape for geometric figures.
My last Windows was Windows 95 (or 98?). I've been exclusively using Linux for ~25 years. I use Ubuntu because I've been using it for ~20 years and have better things to do than try out different distros. My mother, my grandmother, and many of my non-computer-savvy friends also use Ubuntu. I know a Germanist who uses Debian.
It's a bit like with cars. If you know someone who really knows about cars, they'll be able to recommend a solid, simple, super cheap, practical car that will just work and give you no problems. It'll probably be something like a 2010 Toyota Aygo, which you can pick up for next to nothing on the used car market (here in Germany) and which you would never have thought of buying yourself. This is a Linux laptop. Other people who never got this insider tip that driving can be cheap and hassle-free might instead buy a new car from a German manufacturer on credit for half a gross annual salary (or even a whole one). Two years later, the car may already be in the repair shop because the engine is losing oil or because the Nanoslide/Nikasil cylinder liner coating is damaged.
With the Aygo, you can drive from A to B just as well as with any other car, and you might even have a little more fun doing so. But if you need CarPlay and heated seats, distrust things that are cheap, and love that je ne sais quoi that comes with things you've just bought for a lot of money, then this simple 2010 Aygo is not for you.
This weekend, I wrote code for a non-trivial compiler on my old everyday laptop. I didn't even buy it; I got it for free because the previous owner considered the device obsolete and unusable. Slowly, the thing is getting too old for me too, but Linux (Ubuntu) has gotten another couple of years of use out of it. Meanwhile, a friend of mine just bought a used Macbook that still cost more than I would ever spend on a new laptop because she has to write papers for her studies and thinks she needs a “good” computer for that.
I tried to leave Windows 11 for Linux - it just didn't work for me. I installed EndeavourOS onto my main gaming desktop. It worked great for a while and ran all the games I played with my friends. However, one night when I went on to play a game I ran a system update and it seemed to completely break my nvidea drivers - I tried reinstalling them and also using the open source driver. This meant I just couldn't play any games that night and was simply diagnosing linux issues.
I probably chose the wrong distro for this but I really just want the PC to work for playing games without any issues. I don't use it for anything other than playing games so for my time I just went back to Windows 10 and will use that until apps stop working.
Haha, exact same thing happened to me a couple weeks ago. You probably had the same issue as me. The driver dropped support for older cards and you had to switch to a legacy AUR package. I fixed it with some frantic googling while my friends waited a half hour. Not sure how you would know this without subscribing to some arch news feed or something. Not ideal.
That's exactly how it's supposed to work: Arch expects you to check the notes on their news section always before you update. The NVIDIA driver issue and solution was posted on Dec 20th.
I'm not saying I'm reading these regularly, just that yes it's the expected way.
I have been 'enjoying' this with Debian on a PC with a 1080Ti nvidia card, which is no longer supported by the nvidia v590 + drivers. I've had to pin to v580, but the whole "oops, I updated, rebooted and 'look ma, no high-resolution anymore'" got tired really quickly. You have my sympathies.
EndeavourOS is apparently Arch-based so I've got no useful suggestions for fixing there, sorry.
Never heard of that Linux variant. Use one of the big names: Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian.
If you have a choice don't use nVidia either, but the bigger distributions do handle them well.
Yeah the real mistake was starting with Endeavour. I wonder just how many people are turned off by their initial Linux experience because they choose stuff like Arch, Gentoo, or some obscure variant rather than Fedora, Kubuntu or Mint. Even stuff like Bazzite is probably an odd choice for a novice - though it would have handled that failed nVidia upgrade nicely.
I think using an atomic distro like Bazzite would have solved your problem.
This is why I go the console route. I tried building a PC after being inundated with people saying it was better. Even on Windows it felt like it turned into a sys admin job that I didn’t care for. I just wanted to play some games after work.
I can't understand this reasoning. System updates obviously don't become less risky because of the OS they're updating. But going back to Win10 means having less control over when those updates happen (and much less control over, and understanding of, what is updated), and waiting much longer for them to complete.
> System updates obviously don't become less risky because of the OS they're updating
The last time I used arch, I ran an update and it broke my bootloader, meaning the next time I restarted it wouldn't boot at all.
Sure I could make a recovery USB and fix it, but at that point I was away from home, and just really needed to do the totally crazy thing of "using my computer to actually do work".
(To be clear, I didn't and I'm not recommending going back to Windows, just a more sane Linux)
Yikes. It's 2026. "Don't break the bootloader" should be table stakes for any OS distribution's update process by now. I am not a fan of Windows or macOS, but I don't even recall the last time an operating system software broke my ability to boot--maybe during the Windows 2000 days?
Yet, when you go online to refresh your memory on how to update your Linux installation, too many of the guides still say STEP 1: Back everything up because you may not be able to boot after you do this!
My point was exactly that GGP shouldn't have expected to be able to do the system update without risk.
But the usual way to install Linux nowadays is from a live boot, so you automatically have a recovery drive anyway. It's not hard to set up regular restore points with Timeshift or similar, either.
That said, I haven't had problems like what you describe in nearly 4 years.
The mistake is that you did a system update when you wanted to use the computer. Not implying that system updates should be a dangerous thing to do, but just something learnt from experience - I’ve had similar issues, especially with Nvidea drivers and kernel versions getting updated at the same time. The take away is keep the updates to when you have an hour to debug or get comfortable rolling back updates.
That's absurd. The system should be able to update itself without fear that it's going to break anything. The user should not be expected to have to set aside time to babysit an update.
Windows isn't perfect in this respect by any means, but it sure seems like it handles updates a lot better than the distros that have been mentioned in this thread; in that Windows at least takes steps to examine your hardware first and to not apply updates where it's known something has fallen out of support.
Windows also, apparently unlike these mentioned distros, maintains a Last Known Good configuration so if an update does start causing failures, it can automatically roll itself back (or, at worst, can manually be rolled back). There are some distros that do similar, particularly immutable distros; but honestly this sort of thing should be table stakes to the point that if a distro doesn't do it, it should be laughed out of the room.
There is absolutely no acceptable excuse for any operating system to break itself in an update.
So just like windows, don’t update it
Year of the Linux desktop for sure
I mean, you get what you signed up for. If you wanted total stability and infrequent updates then why would you use Arch? (If the answer is "I didn't know what I signed up for" then that's fair. Simply understanding the practical differences between distros is a huge hurdle.)
Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, and Mint remain great recommendations; good stability, community support, etc. (even for Ubuntu, a regular user might not actually care that much about snaps so long as everything works)
I just moved to CachyOS, (from Fedora, and earlier from Ubuntu -- I've been on Linux for a while) and I've been very, very happy. The gaming performance is legitimately better than what I was getting on Fedora, and I've just enjoyed the OS and KDE much more than Gnome Shell. I haven't had any real showstoppers with CachyOS, and it really has felt like a user-friendly version of Arch finally exists.
I think a lot of cachy performance is placebo, because Steam games use the container runtime's Debian 11 libraries, it doesn't use the native CachyOS ones at all.
I'm CPU-bound on one of the games I play, and cachy's scheduler may have made a difference for me. I was also fully on the closed-source NVIDIA drivers in Fedora, and had been totally out of the loop that that the kernel driver had been open sourced. And, cachy had me on a more recent version of the driver.
None of these things are truly unique to CachyOS, but nonetheless I do think I experienced a boost when I switched.
Are you able to quantify the performance improvement, e.g. in FPS on particular games?
Curious as to how CachyOS does it.
I've yet to have a day when CachyOS can come out of sleep: hangs at various steps and requires a hard reboot that somehow relaunches apps on login that I explicitly closed hours ago.
I had the same problem with Fedora which is part of what prompted me to switch. It works great for me in Cachy. I assume either way it was an Nvidia problem.
Not saying I'm not considering it given the current political climate, but I'm spoiled by my Macbook Air. The Thinkpad I've been issued for work costs about the same, runs hot like crazy, always has fans running, is cheap-feeling plastic, thicker, heavier, garbage touchpad, weird keyboard layout (printscreen right next to the arrow keys, what were they thinking?), mushy keys, barely serviceable display ... what do I buy if I want something as sleek and well-built and polished as Apple?
I don't think anyone will build as nice hardware as Apple anytime soon, so I think if that's your primary requirement then any other choice will be a compromise. I don't really like Apple, but it must must acknowledged that even a few basic things (the monitor turning on immediately as I open the screen, the touchpad quality, etc.) seem totally elusive to other manufacturers.
Apple's pretty imperfect, and it's sad to see that they've neglected and regressed their desktop OS, however I don't think anyone can argue that macOS is anywhere near as bad as Windows 11.
Eh. debatable. my work MBP frequently dies and the screen never turns on when i plug it in. I have to wait 15-20 minutes for it to turn on. My Linux laptop on the other hand, the screen turns immediately power or no power/just plugged in
I'm pretty sure Apple is unavoidable if you work as a mobile app developer. I mean, no iOS SDK for Windows/Linux.
If your work area is anything other than it, perhaps the Mac isn't necessary.
While not strictly required, for me macOS has been less cantankerous for running Android Studio on compared to Windows/Linux too.
> If your work area is anything other than it, perhaps the Mac isn't necessary.
How about photography and video production?
Some of the stuff coming out of CES is nice. Whether the apparent quality survives in production is another question.
To each his own. I liked may company issued ThinkPad so much I ended up buying one myself and I have been pushing back getting a replacement (HP Elitebook).
Some of your points are common, such as the touchpad being garbage, or that it runs hotter than an Apple Silicon MacBook Air. But most people consider ThinkPad keyboards to be way better than Apple's and while most (not all) ThinkPads have a plastic shell, they certainly don't feel cheap. Apple displays are typically really good, but ThinkPads have a lot of options, so it is hard to tell.
Your comment, especially regarding the keyboard makes me think you just love your MacBook. Why buy anything else?
Linux support is not great, but a lot of a significant part of what makes Apple great is in their hardware/software integration and they are not doing it open source. It means a MacBook without OSX is a lesser MacBook, but at least, it is not Windows 11.
ThinkPads run the gamut. Their flagship line is nice. In most regards, I enjoy my first gen X1 Nano — good keyboard, screen (even if it annoyingly requires fractional UI scaling), body feels solid despite being lightweight, soft touch plastic makes it feel nice to hold. Trackpad is just ok but the trackpoint makes for that.
It likes to spin up its fan doing the most insignificant things though (even plugging in a pedestrian 1x scaling external monitor can while idle can do it) and its battery life is somewhat abysmal. Standby time is also quite poor.
Some of these things are in theory improved by a newer CPU (Lunar Lake in particular looks decent) but sadly they discontinued the Nano. The Carbon isn’t that much bigger, but the size difference is noticeable in some circumstances.
Are you running windows on this?
It dual boots Windows 11 and Fedora, and I’ve played with other distros in the past. They have minor edges over each other in various ways but none offer a major concrete advantage over the others in any category (except harassment/junkware, which any distro has a major upper hand over Windows 11 in, but Windows 10 accomplishes that almost as well).
Either there’s simply a hard limit on how good this hardware can be in terms of thermals and battery life or neither Lenovo’s tuning of Windows nor any Linux distro has gone far enough in properly leveraging power management and the like.
So the weird answer is... a better model Lenovo. They vary from plastic disaster to metal or carbon fiber dream machine.
Yeah, if you don't like the case quality of a T model Thinkpad, you are the problem ;) - fiber reinforced plastic is arguably a more suitable laptop case material than aluminum.
Lenovo's cheap laptops are as bad as anyone's.
Nothing is quite as slick as Apple, but companies are popping up doing pretty sleek Linux-first laptops, I have a Starlabs notebook [1] and am waiting for their new Starfighter [2]...
[1] https://starlabs.systems/pages/starbook-horizon
[2] https://starlabs.systems/pages/starfighter
Batter life claims are very bold. Also the starfighter launches with a 3 year old CPU .
Doesn't seem to me like a good deal especially price wise.
It looks like the best option for somebody who wants a great laptop and doesn't want a Mac.
And the price looks perfectly fine.
Don't buy one then.
> The Thinkpad I've been issued for work costs about the same, runs hot like crazy
I have a personal Thinkpad (Linux) and a company provided one (W11). The personal one basically never turns on the fan. The company one is hot all the time. Guess why.
As well as beautiful hardware that is a pleasure to use, Apple machines can be capable of running local models like gpt-oss-20B or Qwen Coder portably and without sweating. My 24GB M4 Mini was very cheap considering the local models it can run.
Yes hardware is great. Price per performance watt is also great. But UI sucks. Look at all then posts even macOS fans about new macOS release like the glass ones. I prefer ssh and running jobs in macOS.
> weird keyboard layout
Classic lenovo. Some models have FN as the most bottom left key, instead of ctrl. Gotta be the worst design decision ive ever seen. Everyone copy+pastes and finds, whoever thought that was a good idea really needs relieved of decision making power.
You've got history backwards. IBM Thinkpads did it that way 30+ years ago, when there was no consensus in the industry. Do you switch it now, and anger every lifetime Thinkpad loyalist, or keep it and annoy just the folks who switch back and forth between different vendors' laptops?
In a brief survey of laptop photos from the early 90s, IBM, Toshiba, Zenith, NEC, Packard Bell, Compaq, and Fujitsu all put Fn on the outside.
Epson, Apple, HP, Panasonic, and Sony put it as the second key.
A handful put it as the third key. Heck, one Toshiba machine had Ctrl left of A, Alt on the extreme lower-left starting out the bottom row, followed by Caps Lock and Fn and backslash and finally spacebar.
Only in the last 15-ish years have most of the Fn-Ctrl keyboards died out and the majority of the industry is now using Ctrl-Fn. Thinkpads are the last major holdout, but they didn't decide to buck the trend, the trend bucked them.
You can swap those in BIOS for most models.
Yes. I use my Lenovo that way. Bottom left key is labeled "Fn" and act as Ctrl because I swapped them in BIOS.
Apple also puts fn/globe in the bottom left corner and control to its right.
Yeah, but that's conflating that a key labeled "control" for a Windows machine and a key labeled "control" for a Mac refer to different concepts.
All MacBooks have Fn at the left bottom corner too?
But CMD is generally used instead of control, and at least in my case, with the thumb rather than pinky. Different muscle memory.
Idk, I find it easier to press control on a Thinkpad because it's closer. It being in a corner would be farer away. Anyway, control should be (and traditionally was) where CapsLock is. Just remap it - everything is suddenly easy and ergonomic.
I really like my HP Omnibook 14 with the Ryzen AI HX 370 chip.. it's sleek, well built (so far, at least).. insane battery life.. the standby time on Linux is in weeks and the battery life when light browsing/YouTube viewing is easily 9+ hours. Even the finger print sensor finally just works. The touchpad gestures with kwin input actions are as smooth as, if not better than os x.
The only thing my work 16" MBP does better is the speakers.
edit: Updated the battery life to 9+ hours from 7+ hours based on what the battery monitor says.. I remember binge watching a couple of long movies/tv shows without ever having to plug in the laptop that day...
You can get more than double that battery time with an ARM
Once you cross the ~7h battery range the cons of having to use apple hardware and software is too much to bare.
But then you need Apple hardware and MacOS.
I think they mean snapdragon hardware?
Right, that works if you don't also need very high performance.
Mac hardware is overrated. Asus ExpertBooks, Thinkpads and Dell XPS models are all very nice, and have lasted for just as long as Macbooks do.
Maybe! But the fact that Apple also makes the operating system means the hardware/software integration can’t be beat. I’ve never used a non-Apple laptop where the trackpad worked a tenth as good as any MacBook.
https://frame.work/
Nice for experimentation, but if you want a daily driver that lasts for years: Dell Latitude (now Dell Pro), HP EliteBook or Lenovo ThinkPad. Literally laptops built to last. Will last a decade with ease. Higher segments ofcourse better than lower segments, but in general very very good if you stay away from lowest tier
Such is the cost of freedom, unfortunately. There is no free lunch. Historically, people abandoned comfort and made sacrifices for a greater social good.
I think I get what you’re hinting at. But is there a more expensive option that’s free (as in freedom) and provides an experience that the GP referred to?
And there will never be such option if we all collectively choose to perpetuate Apple's monopoly. It is us, of all people, who need to take a stance, because we have the necessary skill.
It’s a computer. Stop acting like a martyr. Your “suffering” is meaningless.
A computer (or a smartphone, basically whichever type of Turing complete Von Neumann machine you use) is your interface to the modern world, from interacting with your government to the stores you frequent and talking to the people you love to the media you consume.
So in that sense I think it does matter who is the ultimate arbiter of what it will and won't do, not only in an individual sense but a societal one. The more people switch to something they themselves control, the less power third parties have over their behavior.
My computer is my work environment and often an entertainment device. As such it affects my quality of life. It affects my mental health as well as my eye health.
Suffering can be real with a bad screen, an overheating laptop or difficult to use software.
My mental health definitely suffers if I'm forced to use software that enriches companies I dislike for good reason.
It's such a shame that Lenovo discontinued the X1 Nano series. It's my everyday casual driver. I would buy a newer model instantly if necessary.
X13 is not that much bigger I believe.
Snapdragon Elite X Gen 2 laptops are coming out as we speak. Assuming you're not doing GPU heavy work (or gaming), that's what you should be looking at. They are equal to M4 performance. Personally I'd look at the new Asus machines from CES.
That sounds like just what I want, that ought to have great battery life as well. Very promising, if someone were to build a nice light laptop around it...
Not so sure :(
https://www.phoronix.com/review/snapdragon-x-elite-linux-eoy...
This is also my problem. I am currently using my docked Macbook instead of my much more powerful desktop running Linux, even though I also want to use Linux more.
Why? Because as much as I want to get rid of my dependence on tech giants, Apple's products are just so damn good, and they Just Work^TM, especially with each other.
Having used Linux on/off for many years, I can say that it's definitely gotten better, but I am still waiting for the year of the Linux desktop. It doesn't have to be as polished as my Mac, but I'd like to at least not have to fight with Bluetooth especially, and things like the dongle for my headset not working and other issues like that.
I think we're always going to have that: there will always be That One Software that doesn't work on Linux, and you need to keep another OS around just to run it. I was able to get rid of Windows everywhere in my home except for one gaming PC, where I keep it around just for Fortnite, because of Epic's insistence on using their nasty kernel-level anti-cheat. So I keep that one machine around isolated from the rest of my network, for the sole purpose of playing one game.
I'm now in the process of un-Appleing my home too, and it's going pretty well, but I know I'll need to keep a single Mac somewhere in the corner of my garage in case I need to use Xcode to build an iOS app or something.
If you want something a bit more like a Macbook Pro, consider the HP Zbook G1A.
It's basically built like a Macbook in terms of case and screen quality, but it's based on an AMD Strix Halo chipset - mine is an AI Max Pro+ 395.
The chip design is somewhat similar to Apple Silicon in that it's one big chip with unified memory - you can get them with up to 128GB of unified ram - that thing is a beast for running local LLMs.
Since HP also sells them with Ubuntu preinstalled, Linux support is quite good, though it requires some bleeding edge packages for everything to be supported.
In my case, I have suspend and hibernate working perfectly, fingerprint reader, webcam, etc all work.
> I have suspend and hibernate working perfectly
In Linux? Seriously? How much tweaking did that require?
Do you dare to throw the laptop into a backpack in sleep mode instead of shutting it down first?
I mean, it's certainly not as seamless as an open x86 machine, but if you have an Air already you can always try Linux on it? The Fedora Asahi spin [1] supports pretty much everything on M1/M2 devices.
[1] https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support
USB-C display support is coming soon too.
Huawei?
Every major tech publication seems to be making a version of this article for the new year.
It's impressive Microsoft has bungled Windows enough to make this go viral.
As a long time Linux user I started with Red Hat 7.2. Then moved on to Slackware from there to Ububtu and finally to ArchLinux.
While Linux and the user space ecosystem has come a long way there are still plenty of sharp edges and anyone planning to use Linux long term must be able to figure some issues that will inevitably happen sooner or later when some update/system upgrade happens.
Even though I consider myself fairly proficient Linux user I also gave up on Linux on laptops..life is just too short to tinker to make it work. (Power saving, suspend/resume, graphics with Optimus etc. Are still pain points)
Windows has its own sharp edges, such as the crashes the author of this article experienced.
It's hard to evaluate fairly. This author, for example is fed up with specific issues on Windows and new to Linux. He is likely be more forgiving of sharp edges on Linux, recognizing that it's normal for something unfamiliar to be more challenging. On the other hand, someone content with Windows might think of its sharp edges as just how computers are and consider every way in which Linux is merely different to be pointless aggravation.
Most publications covering Windows have a bunch of articles about how to tinker with Windows 11 to keep it from spying on you, showing ads, and forcing the use of an online account. One might argue life is also too short for that.
I feel there's also a fundamental difference in tinkering to get something working vs. tinkering to remove user-hostile features. In the first one the goals of the OS and user are aligned, in the second one not.
This author uses a Mac and he’s trying to compare Windows and Linux. Sounds futile for me.
Ironically, instead of Linux eventually closing this usability gap, what we have is windows developing its own sharp edges and annoyances.
For many users, linux is already easier to use.
I’ll echo this. I keep at least one secondary machine booting Linux and periodically try moving a main one over, but the experience definitely is not yet without significant pains, depending on one’s needs.
This is not to discount the tens of thousands of hours of hard (often volunteer) work put into the ecosystem, but a substantial amount of work remains on things like battery life and UX (both for devs and more typical end users).
For example, why does getting virtualization under Fedora working require a whole stack of commands? Elsewhere, the most that’s needed is ticking a checkbox (if that). Worse, the mode of failure if you haven’t done the correct dance is unintelligible errors in e.g. GNOME Boxes that don’t even point the user in the right direction.
There’s all sorts of somewhat low hanging fruit like this that I suspect hasn’t gotten attention because it’s not particularly sexy or interesting.
I don't think I have ever had a system upgrade break my system on any Debian derived or Fedora I used. Also upgrades are not forced upon you like they are in Windows, with its dark patterns nudging you to upgrade.
I am also using GNU/Linux on laptops just fine, and the only issue is with battery life.
I think hardware-wise one needs to do some reading before buying, to check what is supported and what is not well supported. Other than that, I don't have issues. But then again I am also a strict on or off guy, who does not use things like hibernation or standby or whatever at all, so maybe I am dodging many bullets there.
For both ideological and practical reasons, I'd love to switch. If I were a desktop computing person, I'd already have done so years ago.
Alas, I exclusively use laptops - as I work a great deal while travelling.
I do not wish to have to carry around a mouse with me wherever I go with my portable computer.
If any Linux distro manages to replicate even 80% of the smoothness and functionality of a Mac trackpad experience, I'll switch. I have yet to find one, however (and yes, I've tried all the Asahi variants - they don't come close).
Here's a perfect example of this: Using a Mac trackpad on macOS, you can two-finger scroll as fast or slow as you want. If you go slow enough (you might have to "roll" your fingers instead of moving them down), you can scroll your browser pixel-by-pixel. This behavior carries through every app on the system. Scrolling basically does exactly what your fingers do.
Now, run Linux (say, Ubuntu) on that exact same hardware and try scrolling in Firefox or something. Instead of the content moving exactly as your fingers are moving, it does this weird jumpy "page up / page down" like thing as your fingers move. Even moving your fingers as slowly as you can will make the content jump to the next "page" 20 pixels down. This is not just Firefox's behavior: it carries through to every application.
Yes, there's probably some obscure GNOME configuration I need to add to fix this behavior, and if you search online you'll find forum after forum of people asking for logs and responding with "I dunno, try this." For something that should work out of the box.
I always agreed with this take until I went all in on keyboard driven tiling window managers. First with i3 and now with Omarchy/hyprland.
I find my use of the trackpad so rare now that it’s a non factor.
what do you use to get web browsing to work without a mouse? I tried Vimium and Vimperator, but that was a really long time ago.
Agreed. Trackpads on Windows are very good (approaching Mac quality) but on Linux it's hit and (mostly) miss. Gnome gestures are borderline unusable. Sometimes Gnome forgets how many fingers I'm using and every single finger mouse movement is suddenly a gesture, have to retry gestures to switch workspaces because the first two times it fails, etc. It becomes worse with more windows open. No back swipe gesture in Chrome, etc. Basic stuff that is annoying in every day use. Flawless mouse/touchpad support is not too much to ask.
> If any Linux distro manages to replicate even 80% of the smoothness and functionality of a Mac trackpad experience, I'll switch
I find Niri to be a great WM for trackpad use if you are amenable to a scrollable-tiling workflow. All gestures are inertial like MacOS and to my fingers they often feel snappier and more natural than their macOS equivalents. Scrolling is consistent and natural, though which apps have inertial scrolling is definitely hit-or-miss. It perfectly recognizes three and four finger gestures. PikaOS (debian-based) and CachyOS (arch-based) both offer Niri as an option if you want to give it a try.
For context, my experience is on a 4 year old thinkpad which admittedly is probably best case for driver support but is definitely not the best touchpad hardware on the market.
Thanks for the recommendation! I've been playing around with Niri for the past hour and I have to say there's a lot here that I like. I'm still going to need to figure out how to adjust the trackpad gesture sensitivity a bit (which doesn't seem especially straightforward to do) - but this is considerably more buttery than anything I've experienced before on Linux
I've been using fedora desktop on laptop for years, alongside a Mac, without any issues
Take this with a grain of salt, it's impossible for me to tell what you are and aren't comfortable with, but there is an alternative to using trackpads or mice at all and that's tiling window managers. You drive the OS with your keyboard. Combining this with plugins like Vimium for Chromium based browsers (or Tridactyl for Firefox) you can drive your entire OS and browser with keybindings.
As an aside, the latter also teaches you the bindings for Vim which is a nice boon if you've tried in the past and couldn't make it stick.
But again, this might not fit your use case or your preparedness to invest time and effort. I'm just saying.
fwiw... after 20 years I went back to FreeBSD from Linux. I recommend it if you like FreeBSD. [Actually, I run a hybrid where I have a stripped down Debian system and run BSD in a virtual machine, but 99% of my interaction w/ the machine is via FreeBSD.]
I don't know about the "you should too" part. I use Arch, it works fine for me but I am patient and want to use it. Realistically, I would expect the largest migration should be devs switching from mac to Linux. I don't see any reason at all to use a mac for development anymore.
Unfortunately Mac hardware is a huge leap ahead of anything else.
Most of those advantages are practically irrelevant for the majority of users or a matter of having gotten used to things being a certain way.
That just isn't true. Battery life, for example, is definitely not irrelevant for most users.
Mac battery life is insane - I agree. It is very impressive what they have done. Still, I prefer my ThinkPad running Arch even though it probably has 1/2 the battery life of my Macbook.
Most people sit at their desk with the laptop plugged into the socket and use the battery for meetings or in a cafeteria. Either takes maybe an hour or two, three hours tops.
So what? Most people don't care about battery, so let's just have a crap battery? That argument would work, if Apple released a super light laptop with a tiny battery, specially made for "most people who sit at their desk".
No, people do care about battery life. That's where Macs excel. (I'm saying this as a Thinkpad user, where getting 6-8hrs of battery is doable, if you don't do anything on the laptop).
my point is that foregoing a superior OS for reasons that are only relevant on paper is not logical.
No, the touchpad alone puts it way above every laptop I’ve tried
The touchpad is great, yes, I like it, too. But I'm anyway mostly using mouse and keyboard and occasionally the 3-finger-swipe which is possible with Thinkpad+Linux as well since a few years. Thinkpads are also famous for their touchpad/trackpoint if one doesn't fancy using a mouse.
> I'm anyway mostly using mouse and keyboard
Have you considered that you're using the mouse because the touchpad doesn't work as well on any other OS?
It's not the hardware, it's the software somehow that makes the touchpad usable in Mac OS.
i have been using macbooks for many years as that's usually the only corporate option next to thinkpad+windows. and i definitely prefer a logitech mouse.
Has apple severely degraded the developer experience on MacOS recently or something?
You may not need it but no kernel support for containers / cgroups is a deal breaker for me. Windows at least makes an attempt with WSL. But, at the end of the day, most things are just about rationalizing what you want to use. I personally identify with Linux tribe, not Mac tribe therefore that is what I want to use.
I won't comment on the merits. Each person can do what they want. But, the line that caught my attention was:
> The first question often asked of Windows refugees migrating to Linux is, "Why Linux?"
The answer, realistically, is probably "What else?". Unless you're comfortable with the BSD's (which I like, and weren't mentioned), or unless you have recent Mac hardware lying around, it's the easiest and most practical alternative.
It's a bit of a duopoly, isn't it?; with a third leg that's sometimes something in the BSD camp, and sometimes in the MacOS camp.
Try CachyOS, it's based on Arch but with additional optimizations, better defaults, and is user friendly. The problems the author of the article had would not have happened if he spent some time using an user friendly distro before trying a hard distro.
Do CachyOS optimizations actually make any difference whatsoever? I know they enable certain optimization flags whenever building software, but that doesn't directly equate to performance improvements unless you're actually benchmarking and testing it. I've seen some benchmarks in games and it seems there is literally zero performance difference (sometimes it loses to Fedora, even).
I'd always recommend upstream distributions with corporate backing for novice users: Ubuntu or Fedora. If they're coming from Windows: Linux Mint. There's also a clear upgrade path for users who enjoy Mint or Ubuntu: Debian testing.
Arch Linux is awesome, don't get me wrong. I just believe it's borderline unethical to recommend someone installing anything related to Arch on their workstation. It's just not what a beginner should choose at all. CachyOS included, it even makes you choose your bootloader at install (any user-friendly distro would simply never bother you with that and go with GRUB right away).
A user's first distro can make or break their Linux experience. Think hard before recommending new users the flavor of the month or an Arch derivative.
> Do CachyOS optimizations actually make any difference whatsoever? I know they enable certain optimization flags whenever building software, but that doesn't directly equate to performance improvements unless you're actually benchmarking and testing it.
I switched from Windows 11 to Kubuntu a year ago, and then gave CachyOS a shot after hearing praise for it. I'm on a laptop with an AMD iGPU, and CachyOS's `znver4` optimized repos gave a significant bump on my Geekbench results:
(Note: these results are from almost a year ago though)
Lenovo Thinkpad P14s Gen4 AMD
- Windows 11: 2366 Single-Core Score, 10717 Multi-Core Score
- Kubuntu: 2496 Single-Core Score, 9878 Multi-Core Score
- CachyOS: 2569 Single-Core Score, 11563 Multi-Core Score
Repeat tests were essentially the same (Win11 23xx/107xx, Kubuntu 24xx/98xx, Cachy 25xx/115xx)
I love Cachy, but please don't recommend it as a reasonable first step into Linux.
It's a lot more polished than Arch, but it's not for someone who hasn't used Linux before and wants a reliably rock solid and predictable experience 365 days a year, with no fiddling.
It's rolling release, and there are inevitably bugs when updating immediately to every minor version of every part of the OS stack. Arch/Cachy/Endeavour are for experts, and those who enjoy tinkering. (If you want to recommend something Arch-flavored, just recommend Manjaro, and don't listen to the memers who parrot some youtuber's list of ancient and silly engagement-bait grievances.)
A user friendly distribution would be something like Fedora or Ubuntu, not "Arch but with some optimizations that probably won't matter much"
Or Mint? Works flawlessly for me when I need a Linux, which is not so often these days, but if I was still doing cross-platform software development it's what I'd use. Minimal fuss.
Mint is one of the greatest distributions to get started with for users coming from Windows. I've been using Fedora full-time for more than four years now, but before that I used Linux Mint for about a year. It's a great, seamless experience.
Only problem I believe is the lack of customization options in Cinnamon compared to KDE and even Gnome with extensions. I guess that makes the user miss out on some of the cool parts of owning your software. Also, being stuck in X11 will start to become a problem in the next few years: I'm waiting to see what they come up with on that front.
CachyOS? That distro asking you to pick one out of 5 bootloaders and one out of 13 desktop environments? That is rolling and so comes with the implicit contract that you would have your eyeballs liking every package's release notes for any one of them that you ever update?
Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against CachyOS (I really couldn't care less), but if this is where we collectively set the bar for what is "user friendly", we are doing it wrong.
This is hilarious. Recommendations like this are exactly why nobody takes desktop Linux seriously (aside from gamers who yearn to dick-measure about something). A rolling release distro? Let alone Arch? You may as well recommend Gentoo.
That's one of the biggest pain points of convincing someone to switch to linux: the bazillions distributions
Yeah, it can quickly lead to analysis paralysis. I've set up three laptops with a Linux on them for non-tech friends and family members and deliberately went with distros that "just work" (Debian and Fedora specifically).
In general I'd recommend sticking to the simple options and not going into niches unless you/the user actually wants or needs to.
If you wanted to recommend a distro which is a bit more 'out there' (so not just the quadfecta of Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint), I'd much sooner go with Mageia or OpenSUSE than an Arch derivative.
I find this comment funny given it reminded me of a very similar recent thread.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46567586
That's what I first thought of too. The author picks CatchyOS as their first Linux distro, only to find it's more complicated to set up, and then the mouse buttons don't work.
For the Linux newcomer, the biggest advantage of Ubuntu (or Ubuntu derivatives like Mint) is the wealth of guides, tutorials, and Q&As online, allowing you to google most common problems. You can always switch to another distro once you become more confident with Linux.
Maybe don't tell beginners to use something that will so easily break because you didn't read a wiki post. CachyOS is for the kind of gamer who'd de-bloat Windows, etc. to squeeze 1 fps more out of their hardware. If this isn't you then use something else.
Linux doesn't have all the features that Windows has, features that I use daily. It also doesn't work with all of my games and software so it's a non starter for me still. Tried it several times but it always falls short of what I need. I do have it sandboxed in Windows but it's rare that it is needed for how I use a computer.
What specific features? Some people have specific software they need, but features really surprises me.
For me, one of them would be an actually working way of putting laptop to sleep. Screw you, modern standby.
That’s the exact same 'missing features' script people used to dismiss Apple during the height of the PC era.
This HN thread is ongoing,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46566465 ("I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great (theverge.com)"; 20 hours ago, 596 comments)
The article mentions that the author had a negative experience with Void Linux, that it was missing programs in its repository. If you considered it, give it a try anyway. Void is fast and ridiculously stable, even more so given it's a rolling release distro (so often has very new program versions). And in contrast to the author, I was impressed with the broad range of the package system - he might have had a bit of bad luck with the selection.
I've found a very comfortable home on Void Linux for nearly a decade at this point, and wouldn't consider any other distro for desktop use. I find Void to be rock-solid stable and relentlessly simple.
The author of TFA hopped from Mint -> Debian -> Bazzite -> Fedora -> Void -> Artix, so Void is an extremely obvious outlier here.
Aside from Void, every other distro he tried was either a newbie-friendly desktop distro (Mint, Debian, Fedora, Bazzite), or "Arch, but easier, with an installer" (Artix).
Bad luck with Void's package selection is fair enough, but I'm not sure what he meant by "driver compatibility was a big issue" - Void uses an upstream kernel and driver availability should be roughly the same anywhere.
He's using a Ryzen APU on desktop so graphics drivers shouldn't have been an issue there. The MacBook had problems with Broadcom Wi-Fi drivers on Artix(!), but I'd wager this would affect all distros out of the box, and Void has the Broadcom drivers[0] available as well.
It's frustrating that he doesn't explicitly mention what he couldn't find drivers for on Void. I assume it was Broadcom Wi-Fi and he didn't enable the nonfree repository. In fairness, Void's docs don't cover any Broadcom quirks so maybe this isn't as discoverable as it should be.
[0] https://voidlinux.org/packages/?arch=x86_64&q=broadcom
Seconding this. I was impressed by Void linux stability and speed: xbps (with xtools) might be the fastest and most powerful package manager I've *ever* used.
Sure, Void doesn't have the endless options of Arch+AUR for packages, but it had everything I needed. Even the well-maintained, latest versions of less common software, like Nim compiler.
The author might also missed that Void has a non-free repository, that you have to install for stuff like proprietary drivers, DRM and Steam.
Gaming is all well and good, but I'd be interested to hear of experiences with moving and using Audio apps (Ableton Live, Cubase and other Steinberg apps, plus many VSTs) from Windows to Linux.
I see Wine, YABridge and LinVST mentioned in searches, but while I've got plenty of Linux experience, I'm time-poor and would prefer to make computers make noises rather than spend my time making things work. I have Reaper which is cross-platform but again, getting the VSTs working would be great (at a bare minimum).
A Mac is not an option here. Any pointers gratefully received!
> I'm time-poor and would prefer to make computers make noises
Then Linux is not for you at this point. I don't mean to discourage you - for me, Reaper works, Scarlett works, ffmpeg works etc. But there are quirks. Reaper has horrible scaling on 4k screen, which I believe can be resolved by forcing UI scaling, but this requires change every time I switch from laptop to external monitor, so I just live with tiny buttons. Scarlett works, but requires JACK, and I never got it working properly with Pulse/Pipewire (outputs get duplicated sometimes), also control software doesn't exist, aside from one opensource reimplementation, which works but looks horrible.
If you don't have time, just don't.
> but I'd be interested to hear of experiences with moving and using Audio apps (Ableton Live
I've been using Linux for work and hobbies for more than a decade at this point, mostly Arch Linux, some CachyOS, but always had a partition of Windows available too. Why? Almost solely because Ableton does not run properly with Wine, Proton or any other tooling, and has never been able to do so, for as long as I've used Ableton (since version 8 or 9 I think).
If you spend most of your day with Ableton, then Linux is not ready for you, and then I'm not even considering plugins or what not, just the default and standard stuff is not running properly no matter what you'll try.
right - same here WRT windows partition. Not always using Live, but it gets used when it's necessary. I'm slightly disappointed that they haven't done the decent thing and released a Linux version, but .. ah well, what can ya do hey?
I love how windows-linux discussion is populated by DAW/VST incompatibility. I'm still new to the industry, and therefore also open minded about daw/plugins.
I actually had good experience with setting up yabridge, it could have worked for me I think. But the elephant in the room is that many big commercial plugins use JUCE as a framework, and the recent release of JUCE (JUCE8) just broke compatibility with wine and seem to be sabotaging wine-based usage completely, and are not considering going back at the moment.
https://forum.juce.com/t/juce8-direct2d-wine-yabridge/64298/...
https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge/issues/386
There are patches based on binary diffs to JUCE7, but it is just so much pain to simply run the commonest plugins in the field :/
So I'm now kind of stuck between using windows with commercial plugins or use linux with mainly smaller scale alternatives (although there are good ones: lsp, decent sampler, cardinal, surge)
Thanks! I wasn't aware of the JUCE newer version issue.. I'll have to (sometime) dig into that a bit deeper. Me I don't mind the idea of the smaller-scale alternatives, but having to occasionally work withothers that aren't linux based could be.. problematic.
I can't speak for DAWs but in 2019 when I tried switching to native Linux my Scarlett 2i2 3rd gen USB audio interface did not play nicely with Debian at the time. I'd get an endless amount of crackles and pops during recordings / playback and I spent days going over tons of audio configs / tools (Jack, Alsa, PulseAudio, etc.). They weren't xruns, at least Jack wasn't reporting them as that. Buffer sizes were normal too.
The good news is the same interface today works fine with PipeWire, without needing to tweak anything. I am using Arch this time around.
Yeah, these days the Scarletts are fine (as is the aging Firewire connected Edirol FA-101 I've got attached). Non-DAW things such as Supercollider work fine, but I focus less on that sort of environment (which isn't a dis - SC is great!).
I use Reaper for Linux and love it. Getting Windows VSTs to work is okay with lin-vst and wine. Bascially install wine with your package manager, maybe run winecfg, then get lin-vst and make a copy of its single so-file, named the same as each vst binary in the same directory, then add that dir as a vst location in Reaper. As far as I remember.
thanks!
What about computer games such as age of empires ? Can we play regular computer games ?
Yes. Valve (Steam) spent more than a decade building and refining a translation layer called Proton. Nearly 80% of the vast Steam library is now compatible with Linux to the point they are releasing actual Linux consoles (Steam Deck and Steam Machine).
For your regular PC, you can install a gaming-focused distribution like Bazzite to get everything sorted out automatically.
80% is really impressive, but another way to state it is that 20% of the games you try won't work. I don't think I'd put up with that if I was a gamer. I guess maybe it's not evenly distributed. Do a higher percentage of the most popular games work?
That 20% is mostly covered by competitive online multiplayer games that use kernel-level anti-cheat systems which will only work on Windows. There's not a whole lot Valve can do about that, other than continuing to push Linux for gaming and hope that it gets popular enough to create an incentive for anti-cheat providers to start targeting Linux as well.
I never understood why game devs don't just segregate players based on their anti-cheat status. Have a setting in the game like "only play with anti-cheat verified players" that defaults to yes.
That way Linux gamers can still play with other Linux gamers if they want (and cheaters).
Not an ideal situation but probably better than nothing.
I think that would make Linux players into second-class citizens who could only play in a pool that is 90+% filled with Windows cheaters.
Segregating into two pools: Windows-verified, or Linux-unverified, would probably not work for Linux users either. It'd be the same problem (on a smaller scale) as not including kernel anticheat in Windows. No fun for the non-cheaters.
I'm not a gamer though, so I may be missing important details.
I think it's largely to do with the whether the games are PvP multiplayer or not. I.e. many such games have anti-cheat systems that embed in the Windows kernel (or something like that - my Windows internals knowledge is... slim).
I assert that most people who're happy running Linux on their desktop (for games or productivity or development) do not overlap much with the people who're happy to take kernel patches from UbiFuckingSoft. And this includes those people who're willing to take closed-source NVIDIA drivers.
Games with kernel-mode anti-cheat consistently don't work and probably never will (barring them having it removed or made optional). Titles released more recently are more likely to not work simply due to not having had fixes applied to them, although a rather large amount of newer games work fine out of the box if they aren't doing weird stuff. Other than that it's a toss-up, since while it's usually the same few things that prevent games from working properly on Linux, it's not something you as Jonothan S. Gamer will know about unless you go and do research and check ProtonDB and whatnot.
A good rule of thumb is that single player games generally just™ work and that older games generally just™ work.
Building, no. Refining Wine, yes.
In a word, yes. While Wine has been an option for decades, Valve and Proton have made gaming on Linux mainstream. You can check compatibility reports from https://www.protondb.com/ for whichever games you're interested in.
> Valve and Proton have made gaming on Linux mainstream.
"Mainstream" is maybe too hefty, the amount of Linux users (including SteamDeck) who participate in the Steam surveys are still in the single digit if I remember correctly. Most gamers today still use Windows, even though Valve made great strides with Proton.
I haven't had any issues installing AoE Gold under Wine. Furthermore, stuff on Steam is usually trivial to get running (just click and play). With Heroic same goes for stuff on GOG (and presumably Epic as well, IDK). PlayOnLinux and Lutris have good support for games you install from CD (I probably could have used either of them to install AoE Gold, but I've been using wine directly for so long I find it more convenient to do it myself).
Many are playable with Steam on Linux, each game in the store states whether that's supported or not. Even non-supported games allow an override. I've tried that for a few with varying success. Steam has so far refunded purchases that didn't run on Linux. Then there's Lutris which runs many old games fine.
Having a steam deck, I can say that gaming on linux is totally doable, but you may want to look on protondb to see what is not compatible with your library.
There is a community maintained website for checking game compatibility: https://www.protondb.com/
For years now. Look into proton, its built into steam even.
There was an article on the front page a few months ago that showed most games performed better on the Steam Deck with Linux than Windows.
Sure, Valve has done some amazing work in that regard. Most mainstream and older games just work, others require some tinkering.
You can play almost all solo games and most multi-player games depending on anti-cheat
Age of empires will be okay.
For reference, you can always check out these websites:
[0]: https://www.protondb.com/explore [1]: https://areweanticheatyet.com/
recently had need to run a legacy win32 game on linux. the game works fine but the updater is in some windows specific java that i just could not get to work, which is kind of ironic since its the "run anywhere" java that wouldnt work but the C++ game would. anyway -- i run the updater in a windows vm that has shared access to the game files, close the vm then run the game through wine. works.
Its simple. If you require specific software which only runs on Windows, then you cannot use Linux. If that's not the case, the Linux desktop these days is entirely capable of helping you achieve your goals.
I installed Bazzite on a slightly esoteric machine, a 16" dual-screen Asus laptop. It's not really my cup of tea as a distribution, either philosophically or practically, but it has some specific patches for Asus hardware and as a result it seems to work better in every way than Windows. Every couple of months I'm annoyed for a moment by all the immutability stuff and the package system, but for both work and play it's running perfectly.
Bluefin has been a game changer for me
I am pretty sure that my previous attempts at a Linux desktop have failed because I would tweak my setup by installing packages and updates until I broke it and needed to reinstall. But I want my machine to be indestructible and "just work". Waiting day(s) to diagnose and fix an issue just isn't worth it. I have been contemplating a switch to Linux again. This time, I will embrace a LTS distribution and virtualization so that my tinkering doesn't break things. I always want a safe level to fall back to. Also, I would enthusiastically pay for a support subscription. I know they are out there. Which companies/organizations have the most positive impact in the open source community?
There is no meaningful support subscription for end users, only enterprise. If you want to donate pick specific small projects you like.
I don’t understand how someone breaks a system but look into immutable options like Fedora Silverblue.
It has been a few years, but for example breaking the display, bluetooth, power states/sleep, or wifi. Or subtly messing up dependencies of various other packages that I was trying. I just don't want the overhead of system administration. These days I mostly use VMs or WSL. But I am thinking that I want my host OS to be Linux.
Immutable saves you from packaging issues but configuration always has to happen to some degree. To help there maybe use file system snapshots (btrfs) to rollback changes.
From what I remember, trying to fix configuration was mostly to recover from whatever broken state package/distro updates caused. Thanks for the Silverblue suggestion. In recent years, I enjoyed using Pop!_OS, at least on VMs.
I am on Linux for 26 years. Last 5 years I run PopOs! on my desktop. User friendly and stable, Ubuntu based.
Linux user for 25-ish years here, and exclusively so.
I used to heavily configure my ubuntu distros to be keyboard exclusive with i3wm and such, but I ended up with regolith desktop, a version of ubuntu with pre installed i3wm and keyboard focus. I'm too old to keep my dotfiles updated.
Nowadays, imo you should only choose the package manager, any os using that chosen package manager (aptitude for ubuntu) definitely had a version that's close enough to your use cases.
Similarly, I picked up Linux in 1997 and have used it as my primary since 1999. I've distro hopped through probably a dozen or so distros, but ultimately landed on PopOS for most of my machines, similarly to you. These threads are always somewhat disheartening, hearing everybody say they tried to switch but couldn't because of one issue or another. I guess I've just learned to work through it.
I am very interested in the Steam Machine, because it will be an out-of-the-box Linux experience with (hopefully) no tweaking required. Hardware designed for Linux gaming from the beginning. I'm willing to put up with worse performance per dollar to not have to spend time tweaking the thing myself, similar to a game console.
I think Steam Machine + macOS laptop + NAS running debian headless is my personal compute plan for the next few years.
I'm not interested in the Steam Machine, but I DO am interested in switching my gaming PC to Steam OS! I hope the Steam Machine will put more pressure on getting Steam OS to the masses.
it's really good these days. nvidia finally fixed their drivers (i suppose all it took was becoming the richest company on earth), kde is really nicely polished and all the friction from the x11 to wayland transition is over (at least from my perspective of an end user of linux desktops).
it's remarkably stable and reliable and way less annoying than modern windows or macos. i'm looking forward to a panther lake thinkpad with robust linux support and incredible battery life.
I never understood the Linux guys. All that matters to a common user is the user interface and whether their apps and games run or not. They don't care about telemetry, architecture etc. The damn thing should just work and it should allow familiar interactions.
I have tried switching to Linux several times over the decades. It required many compromises on the interface and compatibilities. Why is it so difficult to slap on a clone of Windows or Mac UI on Linux? I'm not saying they are good. But it avoids the feel of moving to an alien land and learn everything afresh. People don't have time for that.
This is why I recommend macOS to everyone. It's the only OS that is truly polished and where you don't have to worry about viruses and everything just works. mac could be better, but it's still leading the pack. People don't want the OS to become their hobby.
I dislike what Microsoft is doing to Windows as much as the next guy but if you get Windows Pro and disable all the icky stuff it is a rock solid OS that just works. Sure, once a year an update might add some new icky stuff but then you just spend 10 minutes to find out how to disable that and go about your business. It. Just. Works.
MacOS has its warts and 'unpolish' as well, as it also gets viruses despite what Apple may want you to believe.
Have you tried Linux with KDE? Feels more Windows-ish than modern Windows
Trademarks and other intellectual property rights prevent cloning those.
I have an old Lenovo IdeaPad with fairly modest hardware, and I have both Fedora and Windows installed. About 90% of the time I use Fedora, and it works fine overall. The only thing that bothers me is that Firefox on Fedora feels noticeably more sluggish compared to Edge or Firefox on Windows. Maybe it’s just a perception issue, but I’d love to know what others are using as their web browser on Linux.
Edge is based on Chromium. I'd test any Chromium based browsers (Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi, etc) to see if performance is better.
I switched to Debian/Cinnamon few weeks ago. I am fairly good with the server sides of things, but the desktop a little painful.
Screens dont wake up properly, sometimes only one screens wakes up, sometimes one screen wakes up with a wrong resolution. The usual linux desktop problems where nothing really works and finding a solution is very hard to many different permutations of hardware / os / kernel / drivers / window manager / etc.
I have the framework desktop with AMD 395+
My windows ssd is plugged and I can boot it directly using virt-manager, so thats kinda solves some windows specific stuff like tax software.
You are using a distro that is generally very behind on software versions and doesn’t bundle non free software (Debian) on a laptop with brand new hardware. Additionally, you are running a DE (cinnamon) which is really designed for a specific distro (Mint) which you are not using.
If you want stuff to just work you might want to try using a more up to date distro with a mainstream desktop. Stock Ubuntu or Fedora would probably work fine for you.
debian 13 is using kernel 6.12 vs ubuntu 24 6.14. I don't think it's a kernel issue, and more that amd drivers aren't there yet for the new hardware.
running the latest also is problematic, i.e. a new kernel upgrade that blows thing up.
and that's the main difference between linux and windows, windows just works, osx just works, linux is a minefield of different quirks.
The amd drivers might not there, and they will continue to not be there on the version of the kernel you are using and choosing to be stuck on by using Debian. Drivers are part of the kernel in Linux, it’s not how windows works. Ubuntu and Fedora are not unstable, you are just choosing pain for yourself.
>Drivers are part of the kernel in Linux
While the drivers at the runtime are part of the kernel, they are not distributed as part of the kernel.
My drivers are *latest* -> 6.16.6.30200100-2255209.24.04
https://instinct.docs.amd.com/projects/amdgpu-docs/en/latest...
Debian is *stable*, but you are so far only proving my point in my original post.
If you are going to download ubuntu, the version proposed is 24.04 that has older kernel version than my debian 13.
https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop -> Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS -> Kernel 6.8
> Debian is stable,
Stable in Linux language is a synonym for OLD. Don't let any stable OSes near any hardware that is newer than the release, and you'll be fine.
Linux 6.12 was released back in 2024, which is several months earlier than the hardware you have. So the reasonable expectation is that there is a high chance that fixes for it won't be in yet.
And use the builtin AMD drivers, you shouldn't have to touch those assuming other choices were done ok.
This is just false. Amdgpu is an in tree kernel module and has been forever. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/gpu/amdgpu/index.html
If you are installing via an outside method, again, you are going agasint the grain for no good reason and making problems for yourself.
Nobody is suggesting installing LTS on brand new hardware.
>This is just false. Amdgpu is an in tree kernel module and has been forever. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/gpu/amdgpu/index.html
You are arguing and arguing and shifting goal posts as we go.
The facts are:
* I am running the latest amdgpu video driver.
* AI 395 wasn't released yesterday, but a year ago.
* (My original point) Many different permutations of hardware / os / kernel / drivers / window manager / etc.
I highly doubt that installing Ubuntu 25.10 will fix the issue. Can you provide that guarantee? No. Then we can stop talking.
Honestly, just switching to a kernel that isn't older than your hardware have a decent chance of fixing your issues. It is typically fine to upgrade kernels unless the distro has made some special modifications to them, and it was a very long time since I was hit by something like that.
I’m not shifting any goal posts. I’m just tired of these posts from people saying that Linux is unstable, has quirks, etc but when you dig into it, all of the “quirks” are actually the result of strange decisions made by the author.
It’s fine to be new to Linux, but please refrain from the sweeping generalizations until you are more familiar with how it works.
This has been my issue as well - screens waking or not waking up. On latest Linux Mint and everything is great except when switching back and forth inputs between my personal and work laptop (running Windows), I have to do it twice going to my personal laptop or else the external monitor won't show.
Frankly I'd love to switch from Windows to Linux. But it's the applications. My last attempt to switch got hung up on a few things (in order if importance, probably):
- Quicken. I have 30 years of personal financial data in quicken. I'm not completely opposed to migrating to something else, but I haven't seen a good substitute. I'd probably have to learn double entry bookkeeping, and I'm unsure if other software could still download data from my bank and investment accounts. I'm sure as hell not going to start entering transactions manually (ugh).
- Ableton live. I do have a copy of bitwig, but I am unfamiliar with its workflow, and would have to figure out which of my vsts I would lose, and it seems a big pain in the ass.
- Plex server. For some reason, out of the box this was dog slow. Because of the other issues, I was unwilling to spend the time to try to figure out what was going on with this.
- The are games I would probably lose, but honestly there are so many games available I doubt I would care that much.
How many hundreds of hours am I gonna have to take to figure this all out before I have a working system again? Not my idea of a good time even if I like the outcome.
Edit: and this is from somebody who loves the idea of Linux! I first installed 0.11 or 0.12 way back in the early 90s from a stack of floppies!
> - Quicken. I have 30 years of personal financial data in quicken. I'm not completely opposed to migrating to something else,
Genuinely curious - outside of personal satisfaction/scratching the itch to store data, does personal financial data dating 30 years ago serve any practical purpose?
Occasionally I want to see what I paid for something, or when it happened, or who the vendor was. So if I can't migrate the data somehow, I'd still have to keep a copy of quicken around to access that old data even if I was using some other software for current data.
I might be willing to give all that up if I could find something that worked for new transactions, but I haven't found it yet.
Based on your assessment you’d have almost no issue at all.
I’m almost certain you’d have no trouble running Quicken or Ableton. Ableton even has a Bottles configuration available, which is a one-click GUI install:
https://usebottles.com/app/#abletonlive
Isn’t Quicken also primarily a web/cloud app now?
Of course, if Wine-based solutions really don’t work, you also have the option to run a VM or dual boot for those one-off needs.
Your comment on plex server seems odd. It seems like most people run it via Docker, I can’t imagine what kind of Linux-specific issue you had. Docker/podman on Linux is quite superior to the experience on Mac and Windows.
As far as games, I have trouble finding games that don’t work. Steam and other launchers for other stores have pretty much eliminated this issue. There are even some online games with anti-cheat software that work in Linux.
Hundreds of hours? No, not really. Not these days. I know it’s hard to believe me but I went through this same thing switching from macOS to Linux last year. I was shocked, I almost thought my experiment would fail and I’d go back. But no, it’s so solid and a bunch of stuff I expected to not work just…worked. (I chose Bazzite as my distribution on a Framework 13).
Current quicken doesn't run on Linux, and the web version doesn't connect to any online investment accounts as far as I know, only bank accounts.
Ableton would still have the issue of: which plugins can I still somehow get to work? And which do I just lose? And then: how reliable is it? Does it really just work, or am I gonna be fighting glitches all the time?
I suspect part of the problem might be a mental block on my end. I spent 25 years as a sysadmin before I retired, and the idea of going back to that is just not acceptable. And I know it would be hundreds of hours because that's what I spent last time I tried to make the switch a few months ago.
I know it’s not the same application but Quicken Simplifi definitely connects to investment accounts.
Hundreds of hours makes me wonder what distribution you chose…I think if you choose something that’s more designed to work out of the box as a ready to go solution you might have a better experience. For example, since I like occasionally playing games, I chose Bazzite which comes with all the gaming stuff installed already and is an immutable OS that “just works.”
And for sure, I think trying to shoehorn complicated non-Linux applications into your Linux workflow might waste your time. I tried this with Autodesk Fusion and I almost got it to work. But it didn’t work. So I just use that on Windows, but it’s also nice to not be bothering with Windows for the majority of what I do.
The way I do it is that my laptop is Linux and my desktop is on Windows and I can just RDP into it over WireGuard to use Windows apps. So I guess this is cheating: ideally my desktop also leaves Windows but I haven’t made that leap.
I also switched to Linux last month. It hasn't been a smooth experience with my GPU as I'm encountering memory leaks in popular compositors. I also get 150-200ms keyboard input delay in all games using some compositors but not all. I documented as much as I could here https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/gpu-memory-allocation-bugs-wi....
Still, despite all of that when it works it is better than Windows. It's just ironic that my Linux desktop is less stable than Windows 10 since I have to reboot 2-3 times a day from GPU memory leaks. Windows 10 was really stable with the same hardware and had no input delay in games. I only rebooted when the OS pushed an update since I keep my machine on 24 / 7.
For that old of a GPU you may have a better time on X instead of wayland - there the NVIDIA drivers are supposed to be pretty decent.
It would be fair to mention that this is happening for you with a decade old GPU using an EOL driver, which sucks, but is unlikely to be a common experience.
> It would be fair to mention that this is happening for you with a decade old GPU using an EOL driver, which sucks, but is unlikely to be a common experience.
The drivers are still getting maintained by NVIDIA until August 2026. They also got classified as "legacy" on paper 1 day before I installed them.
The compositor memory leak is affecting a lot of people. Since COSMIC and niri both use the same one (smithay), there's threads on GitHub with people using modern GPUs, both NVIDIA and AMD who experience it. There's a lot of replies across all of the different open issues.
The GPU allocation issue on Wayland (separate from the memory leak) also has hundreds of replies on the NVIDIA developer forums with people using new NVIDIA cards with the latest drivers.
The thing is, most people don't talk about either of them because if you have 8+ GB of GPU memory and turn your computer off every night then you won't experience this problem since all GPU memory allocations get reset on shutdown. It happens to be more of a direct problem for me because I have 2 GB of GPU memory but that doesn't mean the problem isn't common. The root cause is still there. Even if I switched to an AMD GPU the niri / smithay memory leak would be present. Instead of rebooting twice a day, if the GPU had 8 GB of memory I'd have to reboot every 2 days (x4 basically).
Since I opened that issue on GitHub NVIDIA did acknowledge it and suggested I try their experimental egl-wayland2 library. I did try that and it hasn't fixed it fully but it has made GPU memory allocations more stable. It even fixed 1 type of leak in niri. This library is decoupled from the drivers themselves as far as I know. I mean, this same library could still be used for the 590 series, it's not 580 specific which means it's not dependent on your GPU model.
> The compositor memory leak is affecting a lot of people. Since COSMIC and niri both use the same one (smithay), there's threads on GitHub with people using modern GPUs, both NVIDIA and AMD who experience it. There's a lot of replies across all of the different open issues.
But then this sounds like a bug in that particular compositor rather than the driver(s)?
fwiw, I have a modern nvidia card, and use the proprietary drivers, and Wayland (KDE/KWin), and that box has a few weeks of uptime.
> But then this sounds like a bug in that particular compositor rather than the driver(s)?
The NVIDIA GPU memory allocation issue affects all NVIDIA cards, at least based on that forum post where there's a good amount of people replying with similar issues with a large combo of cards + drivers.
You probably don't notice it because you rarely ever use all of your GPU's memory at once. Try running `watch nvidia-smi` and then open multiple copies of every hardware accelerated app you have available. Once you reach nearly the max GPU memory apps will either start crashing or fail to open and if you get semi-unlucky your compositor (including KDE on Wayland) will crash if it's the app trying to allocate resources to render the window. I've had plasmashell or kwin hard lock / crash many times with just a small amount of testing.
The expectation is the driver allocates those memory resources to system memory instead of denying the memory to the app. It works correctly in X11 or if you have an AMD card, in Wayland and X11.
The leak is separate and is compositor specific, possibly related to NVIDIA driver bugs (to some degree) but this leak wouldn't be experienced unless you used this compositor. This leak is the compositor doesn't release any GPU memory after any window is closed, so simply opening and closing apps will cause the leak. Combine this with the first problem and that's how you end up rebooting every few hours with a lower end GPU. AMD and NVIDIA are affected.
The post goes into all of these details and there's reproducible tests, and even demo videos showing the first GPU memory allocation problem in Plasma Wayland but not Plasma X11. It also links to all of the related GitHub issues that I could find.
I tried it (PopOS) on my old gaming laptop. It worked when it worked but when it didn't, it REALLY didn't. Linux unfortunately does not support my preferred (which I use semi-professionally) photo software, either (Capture One). Linux desktop feels like nuclear power to me - I've tried switching many many times over the last 20 years and it's just never quite there. I even use a lot of the open source solutions for office software etc. already, just on Windows.
I can recommend the other way round:
For un-bricking my phone, I had to use some proprietary windows-only software. So I took an old Laptop and installed Windows 10.
Installing it was such a pain already. So many dark patterns, so many privacy issues. I even had to create a microsoft account!
After the deed was done, I closed the Laprop, went back to my Linux system and enjoyed it even more :-)
I thought this was Hacker News! How come dumping Windows for Linux in the year 2026 makes the headlines?
Easy karma on HN. We have these posts every couple of days.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46566465
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46483432
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471199
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46457770
Oh, damn!
I bet 2027 will be the year when writing code by hand will be (re)discovered.
Hopefully.
Ah, so karma is a thing on HN as well. That would explain it.
Since 2001 I've used Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, Ubuntu, and Mint. I got rid of them at the first available opportunity. Elon Musk himself couldn't pay me enough to switch to Linux.
For some reason, there's a huge amount of Hacker News readers who are still full-time Windows users. With the forced migration to Windows 11, I guess a lot of them are now not only trying out Linux for the first time (as a desktop system), but also for some reason going for Arch derivatives, which is always fun to see a beginner mess with LOL
Desktop Linux is still very niche, even in technical communities like HN.
It's been Eternal September for quite a few years now.
Today is the 11820th of September 1993.
The opening paragraph gives the reason why Linux is still not at the same level as windows:
“ A few months and several headaches later…”
Additionally, the first comment I read is very positive, yet it also gives insight into the same situation.
Given how many people here are saying that Windows is great after you do enough tweaking it does not seem very different.
> The opening paragraph gives the reason why Linux is still not at the same level as windows:
> “ A few months and several headaches later…”
These are the words of someone that hasn't tried to install Windows on a recent machine. There's plenty of headaches there too.
I went Arch recently as well for about 6 months but am now back on Windows. I was impressed by the amount of games that "just work" but ultimately went back for the few that didn't. Had issues on BF6 and major performance issues on Borderlands 4.
How do you deal with malware/etc ?. Are there reliable products available ?
The line of defenses are different. All my Linux applications are either installed via Flatpak (which runs in a sandbox) or via the official package registry (which requires programs to be open source, and has a strong track record)
Sure but I use Ableton, Lightroom, and Battlefield 6 daily.
> After a Windows update (that I didn't choose to do) wiped that partition and, consequently, the Linux installation
WHAT? How people could tolerate a software that wipes partitions without asking? I mean, I can see that it can be handy if OS managed partitions by itself without asking a user what to do, but if it leads to removing user created partitions, it is a no go.
A long time ago I tried to install Mandrake Linux. In the installation process I started to change partition table and wiped it all, due to a fact that Mandrake Linux used its own custom made partition managed written in Perl that applied changes to a partition table as they arrive. I was used to fdisk, that accumulate changes and allows to review them before applying, the behavior of Mandrake's partition manages was completely alien for me. It was the first and the last time I touched Mandrake or its successor Mandriva or anything with "Mand" in front, even despite the fact that it was my mistake, I should've learned more about the partition manager before using it. It was hard (or maybe impossible) to do in an installer, but it is not an excuse. It was the last time I used installers to install Linux, I don't trust them anymore.
But people are tolerating windows that can wipe a partition when you even do not touch them. I can empathize the author ditching Windows.
It is a known and fairly common dual booting people gets hit with in that windows update rewrite the dual booting setup, it is possible that the author misunderstood what had happened and that it could have been fixed by just fixing the boot setup.
That should of course not be necessary, but it could have saved a few hours of setup if that was the case.
I just want autodesk stuff on Linux and I'll move over, but I imagine they wouldn't like that since it would be easier to circumvent license checking.
I wouldn't worry much about operating systems. They are just a means to an end (which is running your applications) few are in the situation that 100% of their applications run on more than 1 OS, so they even get a choice of OS.
Oh look, a “I switched to linux” article that will convince nobody because it’s full of issues they ran into that users don’t want to and should not have to learn how to solve. Or maybe I’m wrong and everything is smooth now? _reads article_ Nope, it’s exactly as I expected.
Ugghhh.
Even though the author trivialized the problems he had getting his laptop up and running, there were enough obstacles to keep 90% of non-techies from actually getting it working. How many normies have a USB ethernet laying around and understand enough to uninstall drivers that are interfering with the UI?
It's next to impossible to get windows up and running if you dare not get a computer with it preinstalled, AHCI drivers are almost never included in the installation disc. And windows support gives you links to self installing exe files which you can't run, because you presumably run a linux live cd to be able to access the internet and ask for help, and exe files don't run on it, and can't be accessed by the windows installer either.
Then windows and intel support decide to blame the customer, because it's never their company's fault. Sample conversation: https://community.intel.com/t5/Rapid-Storage-Technology/Inte...
> AHCI drivers are almost never included in the installation disc
This was a valid argument with... Windows 9x and XP. Today, not.
Getting Windows up and running isn't necessarily easier. There was a recent review of a handheld Windows device that needed unauthorized hidden driver updates to get performance to match Steam OS. The only way to avoid this type of stuff is to get a Laptop with Ubuntu or Windows preinstalled.
Windows is not exactly free of this sort of nonsense either. Just recently I built a new PC for a friend, and we wanted to keep using his old SSD and Windows installation. After messing about with Bitlocker recovery keys which was already cumbersome enough, we ran into a catch-22 issue where we needed internet access to be able to log in and verify his Microsoft account, but we needed to install a driver for the new motherboard's networking chipset first, for which you need to be able to log in to an account first. Eventually we found that you can use USB tethering from a phone to gain internet access, for which no special driver is needed, which got around the issue but it was not exactly an obvious solution.
Non-techies neither build their own pc, nor do they bother with bitlocker...
I would if Unreal Engine was properly supported
Some of the games I am playing only run on Windows. Thats's the biggest obstacle for me to adopt Linux.
Do they require anti-cheat kernel drivers? If not, there's a good chance proton/steam to runs them.
I just turned 60. My first computer was a 4.77MHz IBM PC with an 8088 processor, two floppy drives, and that magnificent mechanical keyboard IBM shipped in those days. My father, clearly receiving excellent financial advice at the time, picked up a 300bps Hayes modem for the princely sum of $599. CompuServe, here I come!
For context, this was early 1982. That 599 would cost 1,900 today — still a lot for a modem, but not quite the "gazillion" I remembered. Still, it illustrates just how far we've come.
Since then, I've written software professionally for over 40 years (with varying degrees of success). I've owned well over 200 computers — roughly 90% Wintel machines and 10% MacBooks. I've built them, repaired them, debugged them, and occasionally, after particularly frustrating days, set them back together again. I like to think I know my way around a PC.
Six months ago, I decided it was time. "This is the year of the Linux desktop on my machine," I declared, and I meant it. I installed over 20 of the most popular distributions from DistroWatch and used each one for at least two weeks. I was on a mission to rediscover the joy of computing.
For a while, it was genuinely fun. The sheer number of options was overwhelming in the best way possible. Customization everywhere I looked. All those incredible free software packages waiting in the repositories. In the beginning, I didn't even mind that I found myself doing full reinstalls every two or three days due to random instabilities. I was living the dream. Desktop effects and visual flair? Bring it on. Why does Compiz get so much criticism these days? What's more satisfying than a beautifully animated window?
Six weeks in, things changed. The Linux installations started to degrade — subtle at first, then undeniable. Random slowdowns. Browser links that wouldn't register for 10 or 15 seconds. The kind of frustration that makes you stare at the screen and wonder what's happening under the hood. It was consistent across distributions, which suggests this wasn't just a bad package here or there. Something fundamental was happening.
And yes, I'm aware of the irony. The system celebrated for its stability and reliability was the one leaving me longing for a responsive desktop environment. But that's exactly what I experienced, and I gave each distribution a fair shot.
There's also the practical reality: I'm a heavy Ableton Live user, and dual-booting has become increasingly grating. The Linux audio ecosystem has made real progress, but for my specific workflow, it's not there yet. Maybe in another year or two.
So I'm back on Windows 11. It works. It doesn't surprise me. After four decades, I'm okay with "it works" as a primary criterion.
Will I try Linux again? Maybe. The ecosystem continues to improve, and who knows what the next wave of AI-assisted tools might change. But for now, I wanted to share an honest account of what I encountered — because I genuinely wanted Linux to win.
> Six weeks in, things changed. The Linux installations started to degrade — subtle at first, then undeniable. Random slowdowns. Browser links that wouldn't register for 10 or 15 seconds.
This is something that I would expect with Windows over time (not in a few weeks though) but has never happened to me with Linux. I have run less stable rolling release distros, and I have done multiple major version upgrades on the same machine over time over many machines.
its sounds to me as though you are doing some unusual things - few people use Compiz now because DEs like KDE provide those through their default Window managers.
What Linux distributions did you try?
What hardware were you using?
What kind of troubleshooting did you perform?
>> Six weeks in, things changed. The Linux installations started to degrade — subtle at first, then undeniable. Random slowdowns. Browser links that wouldn't register for 10 or 15 seconds. The kind of frustration that makes you stare at the screen and wonder what's happening under the hood. It was consistent across distributions, which suggests this wasn't just a bad package here or there. Something fundamental was happening.
Without more details it would be difficult to determine what problems you were having.
I have never had problems like you describe with Linux. I would be interested to know more details.
> The Linux installations started to degrade — subtle at first, then undeniable. Random slowdowns. Browser links that wouldn't register for 10 or 15 seconds.
Very interesting. It is something I've never hit. Or, rather, I know the symptoms, but in my case they are caused not by the age of the installation, but by the memory use and swapping. When I compile something big, it can eat a lot of memory, and even 32Gb or RAM is not enough sometimes, there are lags and sometimes very painful.
It is really interesting because the behavior was persistent for all Linux distributions you tried, so probably there was some program that ate all the memory. Pity you didn't try running top and watching CPU and memory usage. Now I'll think of possible causes to the end of my days without any hope to find a real cause.
> Six months ago, I decided it was time. "This is the year of the Linux desktop on my machine," I declared, and I meant it. I installed over 20 of the most popular distributions from DistroWatch and used each one for at least two weeks. I was on a mission to rediscover the joy of computing.
Twenty distributions in six months, using each one for at least two weeks. Aside from the overlap, the post claims experience with debugging and repairing computers - but a lot of the blame here is placed on Linux without specifics of hardware of actual distributions used. Reads formulated like the typical narrative meant to deride Linux with surface level anecdotes.
> but a lot of the blame here is placed on Linux without specifics of hardware of actual distributions used.
I don't read blame in this; it's a description of his or her experience.
> Reads formulated like the typical narrative meant to deride Linux with surface level anecdotes.
I don't see this. It is possible for others to have different experiences and preferences without theirs being derision.
Mate, I haven’t touched a Windows machine in almost fifteen years. It’s all Linux and Mac.
I agree modern Windows sucks for the average consumer, with all the dark patterns and icky stuff, but if you are on this forum and technically inclined enough to install Linux, you can just disable all the bad parts of Windows and get a rock solid OS with perfect compatibility. Unpopular opinion, I know, but that's how I view it.
I hope one day to upgrade my laptop to a Honor/Huawei AMD Ryzen AI computer to run Linux. Modern Macbooks unfortunatly do not run Linux and the other laptop manifacturers basically produce expensive trash laptops
Modern MacBooks DO run Linux
Check out https://asahilinux.org/
> Supported processors - M1 and M2, not M3 or M4
The M2 models came out in 2022. You can't buy them new anymore.
Asahi linux doesn't support any of the currently sold macbooks, so I think it's fair to say modern macbooks don't run linux.
This is also at Apple's mercy, if enough people do it there's a non-zero chance they lock things down further. They've done even more consumer-unfriendly things before.
Looking at the support page, that comes with a lot of asterisks still.
Not really, it's a nice tech demo at best.
What's so great about Huawei laptops?
I've been using an Asus EliteBook for the last 3 years. Despite taking a beating, the build quality has held up flawlessly and with 32 GB of RAM, 1 kg form factor, and great battery life, I have no reason to upgrade yet.
> What's so great about Huawei laptops?
Unlike other laptops, there is always the lingering fear of a Chinese backdoor.
I'd rather be concerned about friendly fire from our own. As an US American, i'd rather be concerned about big tech and government backdoors than anything else. Especially in the current atmosphere of doom inside the US.
>As an US American
I have my doubts
Pretty sure GP meant "if I were American..."
Because we all know ASUS doesn't install backdoors by default...
Backdoors in the OS or firmware?
I always use Linux, so I don't care what software it came with. If you're suggesting there are firmware backdoors, I'd like to see your evidence.
There have been known vulnerabilities in ASUS firmware, but I was referring to Armoury Crate which is forcefully pushed on Windows users.
> I'd like to see your evidence.
I think this is a really bad epistemological stance in this case.
Build quality is better and do not have USA backdoors
Nonsense. I've been running Linux just fine as my daily driver on Macbook M4 for a year. Besides battery life (VM is kinda heavy on it) and some minor issues (fewer than you'd think, especially with Vulkan landing in UTM today) it's the best Linux laptop I've owned ever so far. I like macOS as much as the next Linux user here, but it's fairly decent as a hypervisor. If anything, at least it comes with UI unlike Intel ME.
In case you hadn't heard of Framework, they're making modular laptops with the intention of reducing e-waste.
http://framework.computer
Repairable laptops don't reduce e-waste. You replace the mainboard and then what? You have a spare mainboard that sits there collecting dust. The best way to prevent e-waste is to build durable laptops that last a lifetime. Like Dell, HP and Lenovo have been doing for years (while also being very repairable at the same time).
We have open source documentation and CAD around the Mainboards to enable people to reuse them as single board computers or mini PCs after upgrading them out of their laptops. Even if the original owner of the Mainboard has no use for that, the functionality means it has resale value for others to use, reducing waste.
Frameworks computers are expensive, you aren't reducing the e-waste because on amd ryzen ai laptops the ram is soldered like in the other laptops from other manifacturers
That is incorrect. All of our laptops have modular, upgradable memory. Our Framework Desktop is a mini PC that does not because AMD’s Ryzen AI Max platform doesn’t support it. Regardless, we maximized modularity and reuseability on that product too by following PC standards. It uses a MiniITX form factor, standard 120mm fan, and FlexATX power supply.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. They're expensive because they don't have the volume that other manufacturers have. If you dig in my comment history, you'll see me complain about the soldered in ram as well, and some of their other decisions. However their modular configuration is still better than the rest of them.
First you don't have to dump anything to use Linux. The whole thing should not be as antogonistic.
I switched to Linux, Arch btw, Omarchy, sometime last year when it was announced. I installed it on my old Thinkpad and it worked wonderfully, for most part. I realized that I am more productive there in real sense and experience is more delightful.
When I would go back to Mac, I would realize I need several clicks to accomplish something I had on shortcut available. Having websites/apps on shortcuts as an app is huge help. Also working on command line is really much more focused.
Sometimes in September I plugged Thinkpad to desktop setup and in December I set my powerful computer to Omarchy as well.
It isn't seamless experience, there are issues switching from speakers to headphones and dictation can be hard to setup. Overall whole machine seems more powerful and interesting to work on.
This is first time in many years that I can both play and work on same machine which is definitely welcome and surprising.
One more thing to note, nowadays Arch is more stable then Ubunty and works better. However, any distro you pick, you should be happy with, especially if you want to do work, you should just pick and stick with distro.
> There's also ADB (Android Debugging Bridge) via the terminal for executing commands to an Android device. However, I use an iPhone.
I am sorry for you.
Looking forward to your next article: I dumped my iPhone for GrapheneOS, and you should too.
Eh, I wanted to do this, but the manufacturer of my laptop doesn't allow me to disable RST in the BIOS, so I can only work from a flash drive, and it's slow. :(
let me know when you can run visual studio, the best IDE in the world, on Linux, and I wont flinch
It is indeed a huge problem. The whole operating system now behaves and feels like the US government spying on everyone. Now, Microsoft has done that before, but with Win11 it really now seems almost shameless AND desperate in abusing users, while also alienating many of them via "features" they don't want, in particular all the AI garbage slop.
It does not really affect me that much, as I switched to Linux in 2005 or so, give or take, but some people around me, in particular elderly, depend on Windows still. So that's a dilemma. Do I want to install Win11 for them? Or Win10? And help maintain either? Replacing those computers with Linux is not so trivial. You would need virtually kind of 100% "what works on Windows must work on Linux too". Any complexity is a real total showstopper for many elderly people who have very little experience with computer systems.
I switched to fedora and I’m so happy it’s so chill not ads and bullshit everywhere.
All my littler hacking projects are faster setup and my idea is faster
However I think if you do video editing you need Mac or Windows
Davinci Resolve is a high end professional video editing suite, and is well supported on Linux. Also Lightworks (but I'm biased because I used to work there).
I don’t really agree with the “Windows 11 is unstable” narrative, especially compared to the ways that system updates on macOS and Linux have not always been 100% stable.
The functionality of the iPhone connection to Linux is not unique to the platform, that works on Windows as well. iPhones present themselves as cameras when connected via USB and as the author found out, some apps present their internal storage for manipulation.
I’m surprised the author didn’t get KDE Connect to work. It’s a clutch app, and it’s even better for Android users. It’s one of the things that has had me consider switching to Android over iPhone (but there are still a couple of things I just can’t quite get over leaving behind like FaceTime for my non-technical family, the unmatched-by-competitors utility of AirTags, Siri Shortcuts, and my general feeling that without installing GrapheneOS, that Android is a less private and secure OS).
> So why did I switch to Linux, and why am I writing this article about the experience? In a word: joy.
I think this is really what more people should take away from the switch. A lot of the time I see people not wanting to make the leap because they're afraid: Afraid of learning how to use the command line, afraid of asking other people for help, afraid of really using the computer. Learning how things work is how you learn to be free, and that holds true no matter your hobby. The cyclist with their repair kit, the driver with their beater car, the cook and their kitchenware. The more we give away for the sake of immediate convenience, the less control we have.
Linux is no longer in the realm of needing to be an expert to resolve issues, just a little bit of willingness to experiment. This isn't to say all issues are easily solvable, there's plenty of workflows that still require you to stay on Windows and some edge cases where things won't work as you expect. But I always encourage people to try, because why not?
Only thing holding me back is Adobe Lightroom, and has been for a while.
>> Only thing holding me back is Adobe Lightroom.
You might be interested in Darktable or the less common fork called Ansel.
https://www.darktable.org/
https://ansel.photos/en/
These have Windows versions you can try before moving your world to Linux.
Darktable is the best photography editing and classifying software I've ever used. New users should be warned it's quite power-user centric though. Adopting isn't like opening up Lightroom and messing around. You may have to read a bit of documentation regarding the modules and different workflows (i.e. Sigmoid vs FilmicRGB).
I think the Ansel developer has a YouTube series with tutorials on how to edit in Darktable using the Filmic RGB workflow. Not sure if that's where I'd get started nowadays (I've just adopted Sigmoid and it's way quicker to edit with it), but it gave me a solid base in how to use this software.
I tested literally all alternatives to Lightroom, including even other commercial Windows only software, just because I want to get off the subscription. I tested two specific functions I use and need, and zero of all other programs do them well. It's frustrating.
to add on: alternatives I am seriously considering is buying a macbook m2 purely for lightroom and run linux on intel, and macbook m2 + asahi + dumping the intel.
Darktable is another piece of software that really shows warts in UX.
For example, you can right click empty space to "remove" or "update path to file..." in the left hand rail. There shouldn't be a right click option in empty space.
Everything lower case makes it very difficult to quickly parse, especially the settings menu.
Inkscape is also full of these sins. For that matter, so is KDE.
How to run PowerPoint and Excel? I'm stuck with these for work?
No libre office suite will ever be on par with Microsoft proprietary options. It's a constant race of keeping up with features, using mostly unpaid volunteer developers.
I've used Linux for 25+ years and my reaction is always to do my best with the options I have, but in those cases when it's not enough I just say "I'm sorry but I can't edit this document" or "sorry but some of the formatting was lost when I saved this in libreoffice".
The thing is that I'm a senior Linux specialist so people accept my excuses because they generally need my work.
> It's a constant race of keeping up with features, using mostly unpaid volunteer developers.
What new features are Microsoft bringing out that are that critical for LibreOffice et al to catch up with?
I can’t think of much which I use that wasn’t already available in Office 95 which was released 30 years ago.
Aside from OOXML (which isn’t nearly as open as the name suggests) and the ribbon bar (which i personally hate), there hasn’t really been any big innovations.
The only features I can think of are:
- better security model for marcos. But that was only needed because MS Office was insecure to begin with so not really relevant here either
- Unicode support
- more rows in excel (though generally once you start reaching that point, the memory footprint of Excel becomes too great to make working on that spreadsheet practical)
The real issue with LibreOffice isn’t new features. It’s the subtle rending and parsing quirks when working on OOXML documents. But that’s likely Microsoft’s fault and thus OOXML working as intended.
Excel had tons of new and useful features over the past years.
…and they are?
I don’t doubt there’s been plenty of new features. But are they significant enough that users on older versions or non-MS suites are left longing for the latest version of Excel?
I just don’t think there is much innovation left. Or at least not without changing the UX and/or paradigm significantly. Neither of which have happened.
Take a look here: https://www.icaew.com/technical/technology/excel-community/e.... There’s really been a sea change since around 2019. In the aggregate, they change how you work with Excel today.
Thanks for the share. These do look like really nice improvements.
Albeit I wouldn’t say they’re significant enough that LibreOffice would struggle to keep up.
But it is nice to see that Excel is still working on basic quality of life features.
> using mostly unpaid volunteer developers.
I'm not even sure this is true. Isn't there some company (or more) like Collabora behind most of the dev work right now?
Winapps is pretty good to run the Microsoft office suite. https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
A office specific winapps fork : https://github.com/eylenburg/linoffice/
Do you not have a work-issued computer? I'm not being flippant. I don't need to install _anything_ on my home PC for work. It's actively discouraged.
Maybe in a VM.
Or try running via Wine.
You could also try LibreOffice or OnlyOffice and see if the documents are readable / writable.
Failing all that the web versions might work just fine.
Unless you need precise formatting because you will send someone nontrivial slides to present, libreoffice should be fine.
Excel really depends - if you're using it as a glorified document with a table, then libreoffice will do fine. If you need compatibility and more advanced features, or your whole company runs on excel like a financial corp - there's no alternative. VM in that case.
> Failing all that the web versions might work just fine.
I use ~~Office 365~~ the Microsoft 365 Copilot App online all the time on Debian at work.
Winboat should be able to run them: https://www.winboat.app/
As far as compatibility goes, OnlyOffice is fairly good at it, more geared towards MS-compatibility than LibreOffice, which is more of its own thing (and pretty good at that).
MS Office Online has been good with most of the things I need. Has that not been the experience for you?
Can you use the online versions? They are starting to become usable now.
That is what we are supposed to do at work.
Move my documents off my PC and give them to Microsoft?! As a way to stop using a Microsoft OS? It beggars belief.
dual boot
Or a VM for just that purpose. Quickgui was discussed here recently for example to make this easier https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickgui
This never lasts long, in my experience. It’s a nice idea, but it’s a huge pain. At some point, I always end up sticking with the OS that has what I need, which is never Linux. Linux is what I install when feeling idealistic, but it doesn’t allow me to do anything I can’t do on a mainstream OS that is mission critical to my life.
so dual pc ???
I’d say commit. Force yourself to find new tools and workflows on the new OS of choice. If that isn’t possible, it seems like a waste of time and effort.
I can't fully switch because of audio plugins but I'm using Linux, Windows, and macOS anyway because I'm creating cross-platform apps. I think it's best to use all common operating systems and stay proficient with them.
>Dolphin held a pleasant surprise: it could detect my iPhone when it was plugged in. This made it a snap to transfer files to and from my phone as the file manager granted full file access to the iPhone
Wait, what? Is this true? Since when?
Do iphones show the file system as a USB storage or MTP device when plugged into a computer? If so, that has worked for many years.
You can also access the file system over the local network from Dolphin using KDE connect. I know that with Android the phone just appears as a drive and I think its the same with Apple devices.
Another of those? Can people install their OS without having to tell the whole planet about it?
I don't see articles about people installing Windows or Mac everyday like the people installing Linux.
Is it such an achievement to do? That make you proud enough to tell the world?
It's worse than vegetarian people at that point.
And what's the point? The whole thread is filled with "yeah yeah, I installed Linux too!" just like some kind of cult.
Look at you...
Misery loves company. You won't see anybody telling people to switch to Windows, Mac or iPhone because those people are too busy enjoying their OS.
Not really, Linux evangelists are a thing because Linux is primarily held back by lack of adoption. A lot of common issues can be attributed to either:
1. The hardware manufacturer has never tested Linux support for drivers. 2. Some application that you need doesn't target Linux due to lack of users
This isn't everything, sure. But I think it's a majority of the headaches. Thus, Linux-users really want other people to also use Linux, so that companies actually give a shit about supporting it.
There's also the whole ideology involved. A lot of companies are increasingly pushing that you are not allowed to control the computer/phone/device you buy and Linux is at the forefront of combating this.
Am I the only one who thinks (mobile safari with an ad blocker) it’s a jackass move to show a fake popup that leads to “must be an adblocker” and prevents page viewing? Or maybe just bad JS junk causing it?
Update: OMG I turned ad blocker off and what a disaster of a site.
Can recommend https://system76.com and Pop!_OS https://youtu.be/IOp7g7BNzRE?si=IKm6SLIdedgHr-u3 even if the name "Pop OS" isn't my favorite.
Can you also add why and for who you recommend it?
I like it because it's based on Ubuntu, so there's almost always a working guide/solution targeting it. It also ships with Nvidia drivers which saves a lot of headaches for some users. To me the game-changer is the fact that it supports tiling window management with minimal configuration.
It also looks and feels pretty sleek.
Pop!_OS is a solid desktop tailoring of Ubuntu for the hardware.
I would not recommend Pop for server situations, as the desktop trim might be unneeded.
Did this 2 years ago.
I run Fedora, if its what Linus himself runs then why should i choose anything else?
Linus runs this specifically because it supports kernel development decently well. If you aren’t developing the kernel, his reasons for running Fedora have little to no impact on you.
Can we stop with the implicit agism that always pops up in Linux threads? I know it's meant to be positive for Linux but it's still agism that diminishes people whose only crime is that they're of advanced age.
I hate it too. Not long ago I met a grandmother who had spent part of her career writing embedded software for nuclear reactors. I met many others who had jobs in technology.
C'mon Steinberg, Make cubase for Linux so i can jump ship.
I'm waiting on Ableton, Arturia, and Native Instruments. The latter two should have the easiest time since all their stuff is already VST3 and it can support Linux.
As somebody who's doing the same thing for the first time in almost 2 decades: kubuntu wins for me.
Mint was too buggy. It just felt so single-threaded. It had upsides - easiest Nvidia support for example. Cinnamon is nicely customizable and has some great ideas but it's just too rough around the edges.
Raw Debian was just too hard to get Nvidia drivers playing nice.
But for "I'm comfy editing config files but I need some hand-holding for this" KDE with Ubuntu is the best balance of performance and clean design and support.
My biggest disappointment is how little batteries-included gui I'm seeing for core Linux functionality. Where is the systemd service manager? Why are all the file managers so bad at editing permissions?
> Where is the systemd service manager?
Kde used to have a systems settings module for Systemd. There are defitely GUIs for managing user services (its called Background services for me)
> Why are all the file managers so bad at editing permissions?
What does right click and then choose properties in Dolphin not do satisfactorily for you?
I never run into stability issues and couldn't care less about telemetry which feels like admitting some kind of a sin on HN. Windows 11 is fine and Linux will always be for niche use cases.