I've had and seen the coolest desktops on Linux and other unicies. If you're knowledgeable, you have available to you some amazing things.
Linux did lag in performance, but features like virtual desktops, notifications, transparency, and other things were easily a decade ahead of OSX and Windows.
I remember in 2008 in class, playing World of Warcraft via Wine in a window, while also taking notes, tailing logs, streaming music, and writing code, on a pentium III with 2G of ram. If I wanted full attention for WoW, I could go fullscreen, while xchat would still display my IRC messages along the top of the screen.
This simply was not possible on a Windows machine.
I loved to see people's faces light up and have them say "How did you do that??". Oh, I'm using Linux.
Sliding windows, multiple terminals bound to hotkeys, and graphics that were not bound by some UX gatekeepers that are afraid to overwhelm people's senses.
I think it is good to play to your strengths. Linux will never be Windows or OSX.
Yeah, I remember that Quartz was far more advanced than X. My favorite at the time, e16, never supported translucency or transparency very well. But I love that it tried.
It's probably nostalgia talking, but I miss the gnarly desktops that used to be so common.
I remember when Hulu came out in 2009, the default reaction from the community was to release python scripts that auto-ripped it and piped the video into mplayer. Today, the reaction is to compromise our OS by supporting Widevine DRM or some other nonsense.
It probably did more to advocate for Linux when we weren't afraid to be different, or break the rules for the user.
Maybe it's egotistical, but this used to be the experience of using a Linux laptop ten years ago:
https://xkcd.com/272/
Linux actually felt more capable than Windows in a lot of ways, except maybe some hardware support.
Today, it is:
Oh, you're using Linux because you couldn't afford a Windows license, right? Linux is to Windows as OpenOffice is to Microsoft Office?
Linux did lag in performance, but features like virtual desktops, notifications, transparency, and other things were easily a decade ahead of OSX and Windows.
I remember in 2008 in class, playing World of Warcraft via Wine in a window, while also taking notes, tailing logs, streaming music, and writing code, on a pentium III with 2G of ram. If I wanted full attention for WoW, I could go fullscreen, while xchat would still display my IRC messages along the top of the screen.
This simply was not possible on a Windows machine.
I loved to see people's faces light up and have them say "How did you do that??". Oh, I'm using Linux. Sliding windows, multiple terminals bound to hotkeys, and graphics that were not bound by some UX gatekeepers that are afraid to overwhelm people's senses.
I think it is good to play to your strengths. Linux will never be Windows or OSX.