I use PopOS as a daily driver. Linux gaming has picked up quite a bit, to the degree that the Steam Deck runs on it. Linux now comes as part of Windows. QEMU is now running on any developers Mac who uses containers. Anecdotally, my girlfriend (who is not a technologist) is now a Linux power user, to the extent of fully customizing her Gnome environment.
If that isn't Linux on the desktop, then yeah, it may never come.
Personally, I would say that Linux lacks two things:
1. Cross platform integrations. The way MacOS can intelligently switch AirPods over or share with your tablet is nice. Linux doesn't really have that.
2. DirectX that's compatible with Windows DirectX. That would slay Windows gaming. For now, there's Proton.
> 1. Cross platform integrations. The way MacOS can intelligently switch AirPods over or share with your tablet is nice. Linux doesn't really have that.
KDEConnect (and its compatible Gnome counterpart) is pretty good, though I understand it's not exactly what you asked
> 2. DirectX that's compatible with Windows DirectX. That would slay Windows gaming. For now, there's Proton.
Well... I'm not sure why you'd want that specifically, or what you mean by that. There's DXVK which is a compatible implementation, and which you can use natively. There's also gallium-nine, and the wine implementation of DX (including VK3D for DX12). All are pretty feature-complete, can be used for native apps, and there are a few more alternatives (like ToGL, which Valve developed a while back).
I'll have to give those a shot and see if they work on games not running in Proton. My criticism is a bit dated to the last time I did this assessment for the purposes of discussion. Thanks for the callout!
gallium-nine can't really be targetted however. While most distribution with AMD or Intel graphics will have it enabled as part of Mesa, it can't be used for nvidia (unless... well, you could theoretically use zink to run that on top of vulkan as well). It's DX9 in any case.
Winelib has been a thing for a veeery long time, I think it was always possible to build a native executable and link against Wine's DX->OGL translation layer.
If you wanted to try out out, Nobarra, a Fedora based distro which has been tweaked for gaming. It’s done by the person who does the glorious egg roll Proton version.
> Anecdotally, my girlfriend (who is not a technologist) is now a Linux power user
I got my 80+ grandmother-in-law onto a System76 and she has been having a hoot "learning things." For reference, her tech aptitude has involved phone calls where I remind her to plug things in. And, as a bonus, it makes her completely immune to tech support scams.
- Dropbox on Linux hard-locks when trying to sync some files that happily get synced on Windows and macOS
- Google Drive doesn’t even have a good client and you must resort to 3rd-party tools like OverGrive
- Spotify has had broken shortcuts for more than a year now
- Many of Linux it’s file managers still don’t support file thumbnails
- system sleep is still unreliable (one could say broken?)
- power management on laptops is atrocious without deep manual tweaking
- sound on laptop speakers is atrocious without a Pulse EQ profile
- it often still feels like a hodge-podge of different projects slapped together, which it is. Distros that try to tackle this (Elementary) receive nothing but scorn
I like running Linux, but pretending it’s even halfway as user friendly as macOS or even Windows is just deceitful, either to yourself or, even worse, to others.
Hopefully Valve’s hard push into Linux might get 3rd-party developers to improve their Linux clients, because Steam Deck users will be too big a usergroup to ignore.
My Lenovo Legion laptop gets an hour and a half more battery life on PopOS than Windows 11 for casual uses (gaming is about the same but I don't do that on battery). No tweaking or arcane config needed, this is just a plain, regular out of the box experience from a fresh Linux install. If I boot Windows, it will randomly lose the correct time while sleeping and sometimes power itself off. No amount of BIOS or Windows tweaking has resolved it. On the Steam Deck side, Linux sleep seems to work perfectly, I never experience the device struggling to wake from sleep or restore itself and it doesn't drain the battery over night on a whim either. OTOH my wife's Surface laptop with Windows seems pretty great too.
In my experience, if it's not made by Apple you can't trust it to handle power management without hands on experience to prove it first.
The only two issues you mention that are real have nothing to do with Linux itself but third-party support. As you even acknowledge there a multiple functional third party cloud drive clients.
The other complaints like not all file managers have thumbnails is like complaining not all windows apps have tabs. There are great file managers in Linux with thumbnails and they are the defaults in not the major window managers.
Spotify shortcut works fine but maybe you were using a broken package?
I never had an issue with Pulse but Pipewire is the new king on the block and works so smooth.
Third party support has a lot to do with how Linux works though. There's a reason Valve basically abandoned the idea of native Linux games and invested in Proton instead, for instance. It's because everything above the kernel in Linux is kind of a garbage fire when it comes to consistency and compatibility. You usually can't even run a binary compiled for Ubuntu 20.04 on 22.04 despite them theoretically being the same OS two years apart.
Driver support is hindered by the lack of stable driver ABI, basically forcing drivers to be FOSS and mainlined. Granted, this also has some advantages.
Valve isn't abandoning the idea of native Linux games. It is up to the game manufacturer. There are probably about 150 games in my Steam library with native support.
I think the issues you are referring to about compatibility have to do with dynamic compilation and something like glibc, which mostly is a compilation risk that you end up taking but the only times I've encountered it the other packages were already available in my distro and so it was just a matter of updating packages. That is why you should find a distro that is quick to update.
> The only two issues you mention that are real have nothing to do with Linux itself but third-party support.
If you don’t think sleep or power management issues on Linux are real you should do a cursory google. You not having the flu doesn’t mean the flu doesn’t exist and isn’t running rampant.
Also, third party support is critical. The majority of user would not want to use Linux if it didn’t have any access to Dropbox, Spotify, Slack, Discord, VLC, or any of the other creature comforts people expect to be able to use these days.
> Spotify shortcut works fine but maybe you were using a broken package?
Ctrl + right and Ctrl + left (next & previous track) are broken and have been for a long while now. Again, do some research.
> I never had an issue with Pulse but Pipewire is the new king on the block and works so smooth.
Pipewire uses PulseEQ. Also, this has nothing to do with what I mentioned (internal speakers not automatically being EQ’d with a ‘small speaker’ EQ). If you ever hear a MacBook, you’ll be flummoxed by how good it sounds in comparison to the tinny sound of your laptop. EQ is king.
> If you don’t think sleep or power management issues on Linux are real you should do a cursory google.
It's probably terrible on unsupported hardware. Having used Linux-compatible hardware for a while now though, neither of these are an issue.
> majority of user would not want to use Linux if it didn’t have any access to Dropbox, Spotify, Slack, Discord, VLC
Good thing all of those programs are natively packaged for most distros, then.
> Ctrl + right and Ctrl + left (next & previous track) are broken and have been for a long while now.
...because Spotify migrated it's shortcuts to the more technically-correct MPRIS implementation. If you want shortcuts, set them globally and Spotify will respect it.
I'm not going to make the argument that 'everyone should use Linux', but it makes me sad listening to software developers level outdated complaints against the ecosystem. Linux is fine these days, if you don't edit video or do intensive creative work then I see no reason to avoid it.
> Having used Linux-compatible hardware for a while now though, neither of these are an issue.
I have a laptop with that is specifically designed to support out-of-the box and the first thing I had to do with the stock PopOS was disable sleep and hibernate because it reliably crashed the system. Even "Linux-compatible" hardware is extremely hit-or-miss.
> It's probably terrible on unsupported hardware. Having used Linux-compatible hardware for a while now though, neither of these are an issue.
Even on supported hardware there are often tons of snags. You either get a ‘blessed’ device (XPS, some Lenovos, System76, Framework) or trouble lurks. And note that many many more devices are considered ‘supported’!
> ...because Spotify migrated it's shortcuts to the more technically-correct MPRIS implementation. If you want shortcuts, set them globally and Spotify will respect it.
And yet most of the other shortcuts work fine. I also don’t want global player control, because it always ends up activating on the program I don’t want it to.
I also don’t want to have to configure shortcuts manually. They should work out of the box.
Imagine how laughable it would be if Davinci or Darktable or Krita asked you to set all shortcuts yourself.
> Good thing all of those programs are natively packaged for most distros, then.
And yet they nearly always have rough edges the other platforms don’t seem to have. See my Dropbox problem. Or Discord running on such an old Electron that it creates problems with Wayland. No, Webcord isn’t a solution as it is missing a bunch of features and in maintenance mode.
> but it makes me sad listening to software developers level outdated complaints against the ecosystem
I’m getting so irate because they’re not outdated problems. You’re plugging your ears and going
‘la la la la’ thinking that if you don’t acknowledge the problems a lot of others are having, they don’t exist.
It's fascinating behavior. I remember having an issue a while ago and describing it on a forum and the linux defenders literally told me that the issue doesn't exist and I am just making things up. They would simply ignore reality that didn't conform to their belief that linux is the holy grail and is beyond criticism. Psychologists would have field day with these people.
What was the issue? It seems like a lot of people that say things like this are so vague that they really just want to complain but not provide enough information to allow anyone to help.
I can't help notice your post history is just a bunch of Linux bashing without any details about what doesn't work.
What are you running like a 5 year old distro? The only problem that actually exists that you mention is Dropbox client may have issues and an official Google Drive client doesn't exist. If you are having so many issues then it sounds like you've either chosen a poor distro or it is a user issue. None of the other issues exists for me on Arch. I've never even looked for a 'Linux-supported" laptop, whatever that means.
What are you using for GUI with Linux? Given these are complaints you have, I’m guessing you aren’t using a userfriendly / more integrated distro. Ubuntu is not totally GNU and has proprietary code, but it is pretty userfriendly.
Anyway, in general:
If you like Mac, use Gnome. That is the default in Ubuntu.
If you like Windows, use KDE. That comes default in Kubuntu.
Ubuntu is debian-based, so you need to use packages that support that if you use Ubuntu. Dropbox and Spotify both have installation instructions for using it on Ubuntu and, when I used those instructions, everything worked fine.
It is an open source dropbox client. Needs less permissions and the performance is good, it works well in linux but I had some issues on arm based Mac. Used it a year or two ago so perhaps it has gotten better.
I’m willing to bet there exists an open source solution that integrates with the Spotify SDK as well.
Sleep, power management, etc all work well for the userfriendly focused Ubuntu distros. It was a major pain point for me for a while many years ago when I started, but I found that KDE Ubuntu distro and it made everything a lot easier for me migrating to linux. Give it a shot.
I do think Valve involvement will help the landscape a lot, I just hope it doesn’t bring must-haves that are proprietary.
I’ve tried KDE, Gnome, Zorin and Elementary. All have their own sets of problems.
I know of Maestral. It uses the public Dropbox API which means any files Dropbox deems ‘grey area’ (think console BIOSes but there is a ton of stuff that gets erroneously flagged) refuse to sync.
I’m not a first time Linux user, and I can somewhat deal with these pain points, but recommending Linux to layman people, especially when telling them “it’ll work smoother and be more bug-free than Windows and macOS” is just setting them up for a world of technical pain.
In my experience, linux as a technical expert can often times get messy. I’m probably just not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I often got in my own way. The default distros work pretty well these days for a laymen, because they mostly won’t tweak it to the extent, say, I would.
You are experienced and I share some of the pain, so I won’t beat the point in. But I do think every OS has its pain points and advantages — and linux has a unique adaptability that just about anyone can find their niche in. Nothing is bug free but it might just be smoother, given advertising has infected the major corporate Oses.
I use Dropbox on Ubuntu, ipad, iphone without any trouble. I tried Google Drive a few years ago, but it could not even do the initial sync (I know because I waited 30 days for it before giving up).
Isn't Bluetooth multipoint what you're looking for re: intelligently switching Airpods? There are a decent number of non-Apple Bluetooth headphones that can do that with any manufacturer's Bluetooth capabilities (it even works switching between an iPhone and a non-Apple laptop!). For example, the extremely well reviewed Sony WH-1000XM4 can do it — those are over-ear headphones, not the earbuds, but Sony announced that they're updating the earbuds (the WF-1000XM4, to use the nearly-inscrutable Sony product name) to support Bluetooth multipoint too — as well as earbuds and headphones from Anker, Panasonic, etc.
I own the Sony headphones, and the multipoint stuff isn't great. If I as much as get a notification on my computer it'll mute my phone playing music, I can't be in "high quality audio mode" while talking (Bluetooth ext that doesn't seem implemented).
It works, but in my day2day I Bluetooth with my phone, join meetings on both Android and Linux at the same time.
I've got Ubuntu on my home machine and it is an absolute buggy mess.
I tried to right click and format on a flash drive yesterday, the button did nothing.
No errors.
No pop-up messages.
No little spinning wheel.
It did literally nothing. Did not respond, tried to click it multiple times, continued to do nothing.
I have to open up the partition manager and reform at it through there.
I've tried before to drag files from my archives into the window manager, and it doesn't work. The program's not talk to each other so you can't drag and drop between them.
I've tried to use network paths as a folder on tons of different programs, and they rarely handle it well. Best can be a problem on Windows too, but it's so much more common on Linux.
The user experience on Linux is just so incredibly buggy, you have to dig down into the command line at times to fix things, and so much stuff just doesn't work so often, or doesn't work with each other.
Linux on the desktop needs a team of like five people to actually use it every day like a normal user would, but no understanding of the command line, and then constantly complain to the developers so that all of these issues get fixed.
Until that happens Linux on the desktop will not be able to compete with Windows, no matter how many features it has. Because at the end of the day I want my operating system to just work.
I'm not going to say your complaints are invalid, but you're setting a very high bar, one that no mainstream OS clears today. I've had similar and much worse problems on all the big three platforms.
I've never had any problems on Windows similar to the ones I've had on Linux.
On Windows I have never had a button just do nothing. Not for something as simple and common as formatting a flash drive.
I've never had problems dragging and dropping between a popular windows program and the windows operating system.
Maybe it's inherent because Linux is open source and stuff just won't work together because of that, but if that's the case then Linux is doomed to never be able to compete with Windows.
> On Windows I have never had a button just do nothing. Not for something as simple and common as formatting a flash drive.
Amusing, given the amount of times ive clicked on a defunct or near-to-failing drive in windows and either had the drive disappear, or just not do anything.
The amount of times I've seen windows do absolutely fucking nothing in response to a USB, at least linux screams into a console about it
I do find, like you have, that the GUI implementations one finds with Linux tend to be weirdly deficient in very specific ways. For instance, I'm running the latest release, not LTS, of Ubuntu right now, and at this point in time, I still cannot:
-Set a different wallpaper for each monitor
-Make the OS remember where I closed a window and reopen it there
On the second one, it's possible for that to happen, but it's the app's responsibility for some reason. So Firefox does behave that way, as long as I haven't messed with my monitor layout and as long as I quit the app rather than closing the windows one after the other. Nicely nicely, Mozilla.
But my VNC app that I use for half an hour every morning? Every morning I have to move it over to the other monitor immediately after launching. There are other apps that I could try, but I haven't mustered the patience to re-solve my VNC problem when I have a lot of other things to think about as well.
It is even more aggravating that, according to the googling I have done about this, this is because of the adoption of the supposedly-better Wayland server; if I were to run X instead, apparently my window position remembering would come back. This was a solved problem, and that's apparently why it's de-solved. I have not investigated why Wayland is there, but I assume that it's for the same reasons that Systemd is there, ancient processes that have become detestable to modern programmers and needed something to replace them.
Your USB stick and network mapping issues as well, I have had many aggravated days with that stuff. I especially find that once I format a USB to linux, it requires extraordinary measures to even see it again in windows (one has to load diskpart and clean it first, which is a command line process - big deal to a Windows user). I don't know if there's anyone who could be blamed for this aspect, really, interplatform operability will always be a problem while the profit motive is a factor, and UEFI/Secure Boot makes that a minefield. It's a complex world.
Take this as you will, but I don't find I have many problems with mapped drives anymore, as long as I do it the old-fashioned way with /etc/fstab. Very occasionally I might need to run sudo mount -a in a console but that's when something else has gone wrong, network-wise. Once again, the GUI implementations are indeed troublesome, but there at least is a working solution in this case, but one which involves the console, probably.
It's aggravating, to be sure, but it's also free forever, and I have many choices I could try instead of Ubuntu/Gnome, and at some point I will (I have a lot of personal inertia on this, as many do - I've had KDE installed for weeks, haven't touched it in a good ten years now, but I also haven't had to reboot for weeks so I haven't had occasion to bother logging out). I didn't have to pay for it, I'll never have to pay for it, and at some point either someone will sort these minor irritations out, or I might even take a weekend to learn more about how these desktop environments work, and come up with a solution of my own to share and earn the love and respect of my peers.
It's a world of possibility, rather than endless rent-paying, and that is more valuable to some than this or that minor convenience.
Even just on Linux, there are multiple platforms. The big ones are KDE and Gnome. If you want to write the best possible native Linux application, you have to pick one of these and right off the bat you are losing about half of the potential Linux desktops.
I wish KDE and Gnome would merge. I don't really care which one would dominate because (IMHO) they are both excellent. Both give me icons I can double click on to launch an application and that's most of what I need from my desktop environment.
Both Firefox and Chrome use GTK under GNU/Linux, the KDE team has invested a lot of effort in keeping GTK as well supported as you could hope for. Using GTK is fine, though of course Qt allows you to ship a single application to not only Windows, GNU/Linux, and Mac, but with some tweaking Android as well.
Yeah, I have a framework laptop which is supposed to be fairly good for Linux compatability and I'm considering installing Windows. Horrible standby battery life, random lockups when I'm in the settings app, brightness keys that don't work unless you disable other features, deficiencies in non-integer scaling, etc.
Proton is actually really great for gaming, I just can't figure out how to get full screen games to render at native resolution without turning off DPI scaling across the entire system
I don't hate it. The GNU user space is built around a paradigm of source sharing and using the shared source to build a very coherent and pleasant OS. Having some kind of clear separation between that and closed software makes things more pleasant IMO.
"Coherent" is not a word often used to describe the Linux Desktop experience. How many different ways do I have to copy and paste again? Which ones are valid in which contexts?
The OS is coherent (arguably more so than most) even if the GUIs aren't necisarily. A big part of that is because most of the useful apps are shell/VTE apps. Even still it's not like other OS vendors are much better at building good UIs: How many frameworks has MS gone through just to say "screw it, write web apps?" Even Apple can't get everyone onboard with Cocoa.
Wouldn't this be more applicable to BSDs more so than Linux? One is a kernel and userland made by the same team and packaged together and the other is a kernel with a bunch of different philosophies packaged around it.
I don't want to be pedantic and write "GNU/Linux distributions" every time. People know what you mean when you write "Linux." And the result of the distribution model is something similar to the BSDs (when you pull the projects apart I'd argue they're really not so different socially.)
If that isn't Linux on the desktop, then yeah, it may never come.
Personally, I would say that Linux lacks two things:
1. Cross platform integrations. The way MacOS can intelligently switch AirPods over or share with your tablet is nice. Linux doesn't really have that.
2. DirectX that's compatible with Windows DirectX. That would slay Windows gaming. For now, there's Proton.