Was able to even switch Bluetooth profile through GUI
Essentially any game that didn’t use a kernel level spyware works
Chromebook hardware in the $500 range is pretty good
Must software is web based.
I recommend OpenSuse Tumbleweed. Install once, update weekly or biweekly. (It’s a rolling release, so it doesn’t have major upgrades like Windows 10 to 11 does.) About a month ago I did an upgrade on my old laptop. Handled 2 years of updates flawlessly.
I left tumbleweed for alpine and artix because even if you always use –no-recommends for package installation it seems to ship just too much bloat and I left it after it shipped some broken software I didn’t need anyway but must’ve affected system stability too severely, iSCSI iirc
Wow, are you able to use the new s6 supervisor or service manager yet, or is it too early yet? I saw an initial post once but didn’t follow it’s development.
Sorry you had problems with Tumbleweed. The forums and subreddit are very supportive, no matter how you installed the distro. It’s actually why I moved to Tumbleweed from Arch.
If profit and growth continue to be above all else, I don’t see why it wouldn’t gain a decent market share in the next couple of decades.
On the other hand, the Unix model of selling hardware to help pay for software development might breed a more competitive hardware space if there is a big enough user base.
There’s never been a bad year for the Linux desktop. The share size doesn’t matter. So, yes, it is the year of the Linux desktop in my book and it has been that way for decades.
I’ve been tinkering with it since the late 90s and running it as my daily driver both at home and at work for nearly 20 years now. It’s extremely useful.
Linux runs people’s cars, phones, routers, sometimes even fridges. And don’t even get me started on servers. Linux is the most useful OS on the planet. The desktop is just another thing for it to conquer.
Lack of standards, compatibility and totalitarian control of a single person. Pretty much everything that’s important for a Linux kernel is lacking in userland.
We have standards like pipewire, xdg portals and wayland in active development that try to cover anything a desktop OS might need. Lately there has been a huge push towards them, as the standards they replaced weren’t future proof at all.
But I take it that you are more concerned about fragmentation of these standards. I can almost guarantee that a lot if it will just whither away with time. Noone wants to maintain ancient protocols like X11 anymore. We might have another turbulent few years in this transition, but the end result will be worth it.
And I don’t get what you mean with compatibility exactly. There are lots of ways to define that, and the Linux desktop is excellent in many of them. We have xwayland for legacy applications, loads of translation layers to bring together older graphics APIs under the main vulkan drivers, WINE to run windows software, etc. You’re gonna have to be more specific there.
Yeah, some things are getting standardized, that’s great. But many are not even on a roadmap. People still argue which init system is the best, lol. And don’t get me started on package managers…
As for compatibility, even if we forget about the apps, let’s just focus on some modern features. Multi monitor DPI settings work in some distros, but don’t work in others. HDR works in some, but not the others. DRM, proprietary tech, etc. Why the fuck things just don’t work everywhere?
Yeah people are gonna argue about everything, and the only way you can get them to stop is to take the choice away from them. Doesn’t sound like it fits into the principles of open source software, right?
Multionitor scaling and HDR are luxuries. Some distros are working to fix them, others aren’t. The good thing is though that once the code is upstream, everyone benefits from it. Even small distros that choose to run Gnome or KDE can just change a few config files to enable all the fancy things these projects provide.
Of course that doesn’t mean smaller distros are necessarily going to do that, they have the right to be different.
Linux has some of the best device compatability because it’s baked into the kernel. Don’t need to download a driver in most cases, just update the kernel.
Plus it’s known to be a great os for a developer. Also the apt repositories or other repos make installing an app on windows store look like a toddlers first steps in comparison.
Oh and if you use an android phone then you’re using a Linux kernel.
The foundation of the Android platform is the Linux kernel. For example, the Android Runtime (ART) relies on the Linux kernel for underlying functionalities such as threading and low-level memory management. 4 May 2023 Platform architecture - Android Developers
This is exactly the “popular => bad” mentality that needs to die. Good products are good—and perhaps more importantly, bad products are bad—irrespective of their popularity. Linux is a masterpiece as a result of millions of hours of thoughtful and rigorous engineering, not the absence of its wide adoption on desktop. Windows is a dumpster fire as a result of millions of hours of reckless code vomit, not its ubiquity on desktop. See also: the Android operating system you know and (if I had to guess) love.
It already is. It’s becoming increasingly GUI-centric and technologies like Flatpak are blurring the differences between distros. (FWIW I think this is a good thing)
There will certainly be versions of Linux that will become more like Windows. I mean we’re seeing it already with Ubuntu. Android has been that way for years. But there will also always be community-made FOSS alternatives. And Ubuntu development will continue to trickle down to other OSs.
Windows used to be alright/tolerable like 3 operating systems ago, each new version takes features away and brings new bugs that are more and more annoying in their attempt to get a slice of Apple’s closed garden pie. Their auto sign in feature has caused me SO MANY headaches when trying to sign in with a different user
And so will there be more people to look into and fix the vulnerabilities, specially if we can foster a bigger community of open source developers by being a healthier community overall.
That is less likely though. Nerds who like developing FOSS for hobbyist and ideological needs are already doing so and more users will likely only increase normal users into linux, not developers usually
I switched to Ubuntu 22.04 on 2023-12-31. I had used a bunch of other distros back in 2008-2012, then got tired of manually tweaking things constantly. Things have come a long way and there are way more options to make things work. I don’t have to spend hours on the CLI or reboot frequently.
So yeah, I’m going to stick with Ubuntu for a bit, then switch to something else.
… which is why I’m still on Ubuntu. Debian was my first love with Linux. Still have it on a ton of servers. Also have a weird USB video card (Display Link) for my 4th monitor. So I don’t feel like switching, everything just works RN. If I was to jump, it’d be for Nix and all it’s new hotness.
Man I still suck at NixOS and it has it’s kinks/learning curve, but if you’re tired of tweaking things constantly the nice thing about NixOS is all your little tweaks get recorded into a single file which builds your base OS into your particular configuration. So after you tweak it and get it right, you’ll never have to tweak it again even if you change computers
That doesn’t sound too different from the regular Unix paradigm where all your config is stored in your home directory. I’ve wiped my root partition many times over the last decade but usually everything in my desktop environment is just the same as it was. Aside from migration of dotfiles into .config which was honestly overdue.
Unless NixOS is kind of like Ansible and is a build script for the whole system, package management and all? Haven’t tried it myself.
My concern would be slow buildup of unused packages if that’s the case. It’s nice to wipe out that junk on an upgrade.
I haven’t used Ansible but it sounds pretty much like that, basically you write out all the packages you want in a config and it builds the system from that. Very nice in terms of stability and maintainability. I’m very much an amateur so I can’t say for sure but I think the unused package issue would still exist on nix.
Unused packages aren’t typically a problem unless you imperatively change your systems state. Otherwise, If you remove it from your configuration.nix, it’s removed when you switch to your next build. Previous builds/generations keep those versions of those packages, which wastes space, but you can specify garbage collection to remove generations older than a month
My only complaint so far is the best way to properly make a development shell for a python project is either with a still somewhat experimental feature called flakes, or a 3rd party solution poetry2nix. Im probably going to switch to using docker/podman for python projects.
On the other hand, pip is the worst package manager, so being incentivized away from it is kind of a plus
I use both and have my desktop setup to look like my work Mac. It’s about the same TBH. Gaming is much better on Linux tho. But more biz apps ‘just work’ on OSX.
Not much especially if you set up the desktop environment to mimic Mac os. Unless you do pc gaming, then depending on your hardware you get a big boost in available titles.
I have a deck, a few old laptops that have all gone Linux now, and a windows desktop for gaming. The deck being so good, and Windows 11 being so bad, has nearly convinced me to try Linux on the actual desktop.
I think there are still a few games and applications (I’m primarily a C# dev for work) that I “need” Windows for but the case for dropping as much MS from my life as possible has never been stronger.
I do C# dev for work also but use Linux. You’ll have to use Rider for Visual Studio and Datagrip for Sql Server Management Studio. Only drawback I have is that Edit and Continue only works on dotnet > 8.0.
You might need to do a tiny bit of extra support for the launchsettings.json since you’ll need to launch with kestrel server instead of IIS Express.
Legacy dotnet will need an old Ubuntu/Whatever so some docker knowledge may be required since MS didn’t release a snap/flatpak of dotnet yet. 🖕
I use Linux for gaming and dev with a highly customized KDE+bash setup and I love it. :)
I can’t speak for everyone but I used to say “I can’t drop windows because I need XYZ programs all the time”.
Well turns out I don’t, and turns out it’s surprisingly easy to tell my employer (well my professor really, I am a PhD student) “Sorry I can’t run that program, I don’t have windows”. If they don’t accept it, they can supply me with a windows PC.
School districts buy Chromebooks by the thousands. Steam Deck is definitely paving the way in terms of demonstrating a consumer use case for Linux, but I would be shocked if there are even 1/100th the number of them in the wild as there are Chromebooks.
It looks like Linux will be mainstream in India in the next decade. I’m excited since a small fraction of the incredible amount of users will become distro developers.
Sadly there aren’t even Indian manufacturers with linux preinstalled. I’ve heard of starlabs, slimbook, tuxedo, system76 etc. only to find out that most doesn’t ship to india and are not availiable in the stores like flipkart, amazon and local stores, where most of people computers. Still, still India is at 15% now and what if market already has linux preinstalled systems!
I’m trying my very best to love Linux but I’m having so much trouble with Mint.
I’m running a Mint vm on a proxmox to try it out and for some reason my back button and forward button on my mouse maps to the scroll wheel. The scroll wheel is mapped correctly. I installed Spice to improve performance and so far it’s amazing, but the mouse is annoying.
If I run RDP, it works perfectly, but the lag is too annoying.
Its a logitech G502SE. It doesn’t look like it has drivers. I also had problems with a logitech steering wheel when I was running Mint on bare metal. Just not a very linux friendly company.
I installed something similar to this called “Input Mapper”. The problem is the mouse key is not differentiating from the scroll inputs. So I can’t remap something that isn’t there.
I’m pretty sure it’s the proxmox that is making it weird.
My work revolves around using Win11. I have a 3rd screen dedicated to Mint so I can easily switch between systems without much effort.
I think the issue is Spice. It runs the quickest with almost zero lag, but my mouse isn’t perfect. RDP works but there is input lag. I guess I can try another VNC to see if things improve.
If you get a reasonable amount of downtime off of work, you might be able to set up Mint and run Windows in a VM if you really need to. I feel like that might work better. I’m not sure though as I haven’t virtualised an OS in years.
If the problem is spice it might still be a problem though.
GNU/Linux has VM platforms too. But you can run individual things in WINE and see if they work too. I think GNOME Boxes works fine. I’m not sure if it would suit your needs but you can try it.
If I were you I would install Mint on a second drive.
Pretty sure your issues aren’t with Mint they’re with the virtualization platform.
You can get a cheap $40 SSD and install the OS on that.
Be sure to unplug the windows drive before installing Mint to the other drive. Then plug the Win drive back in. Now you can use the bios boot menu to boot into either.
Be sure to unplug the windows drive before installing Mint to the other drive.
Why would you do that? Totally unnecessary. When Windows is already installed any Linux installation respects it without issues. The problem is the other way around, if you install Linux first and then install Windows afterwards on a second partition/drive it nukes your Linux bootloader.
Especially in times of M.2 drives (which are often behind the GPU) you only annoy people by telling them to unplug their Windows drive first. And they might want to use a second partition on that drive if it’s bigger.
always unplug the windows drive I’ve fucked my windows bootloader so many times because if your windows drive shows up in drive order before your Linux drive it’ll fuck with it
I would do that because the last time I tried installing a new distro it fucked my windows bootloader. So your statement isn’t universally true, sorry to say. I have only had this issue once on one distro. I have not spent the time digging into the underlying cause yet. It may well be distro related. I figured I would save a noob a potential gotcha, however.
After Windows 11 came out, I said HELL NO! The whole UI and look of everything is just so awful. I feel bad for my fellow lads who are stuck on Windows still. The only people I get annoyed with are the ones who glorify Windows. Look I’m not forcing people to switch their OS, but god please don’t glorify Windows spying features and say ‘I don’t have anything to hide’. Just say fuck it and make the switch, take back control of your life! RISE THE FUCK UP!
No shade. I respect my Linux brethren. I’m on MacOS, but CLI junkies should unite and drink beers. Or smoke trees. Or whatever. The point is that I love you all. But no Windows peeps.
Me too. As one data point, I don’t use mine to access the web. However, it did get me confident with Linux as a viable choice for my desktop today. I went on to install it dual boot on my main and rarely if ever open Windows. It’s probably a couple months behind in updates.
In the end I just uninstalled windows because every time I opened it, it tried installing all updates and I had to wait 20-30 mins to get to the desktop
Winget, the M$ Store and the other PM I forgot the name of (not choco) exists. But it should one day completely replace .exe installers, they aren’t even practical nor secure! There is no moderation like in an app store.
Ahhh that’s kind of like how it started for me. Now the things I can do on Linux far outstrip the things I can’t, if I switched back to Windows.
Have you messed around with different desktop environments (DEs) yet? That’s my favourite part of Linux. I can’t imagine using a laptop without tiling window manager
To be honest, DEs are one of the biggest things I dislike about trying to use Linux. Nothing works with each other, solutions for one don’t work for another and unless you spend weeks configuring them they all look and function the same.
Windows and Mac are simple. There’s one option, it works well and doesn’t need a bunch of tweaking to make it tolerable (at least to me)
I feel this is now being driven by the decline of desktops in general.
Every now and again I meet someone who somehow gets through life without a desktop.
I can understand someone who owns a Mac/Windows PC just binning it out of frustration and not buying another one. They are just life-sucking levels of horror at this point.
Yes, in that case, it really is. But if you have both a phone and a tablet with a keyboard, any kind of PC might be redundant, if you don’t do any specialized task like coding/video/gaming/photography,…
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