Agreed about the stock apps. I think actually they are being too ambitious. They want to have certain interface guidelines which operate across all apps (things like autosaving state so they can be closed and opened seamlessly), and that's why they're so keen on developing a full suite of their own programs. But independently developing so many apps all at the same time is a massive, massive task. In my opinion they would be better off focusing for the moment on areas where there are gaps, for instance making Shotwell / Pantheon Photos or Geary / Pantheon Mail really excellent. It's making the perfect the enemy of the good to redirect their effort to reimplementing their own music app and their own text editor etc, when there are good alternatives.

Agree about the general sentiment, also. In general it's an excellent project.

Really the best strategy would be to take existing Linux desktop staples and send patches that allow them to be reskinned enough to get the consistent L+F they want.

The presumption there is that the UI differences are at the skin level, and not tied to behavior, application architecture, toolkit decisions, etc.

The other approach they could take is the Mono/.net approach, which is to have some core domain logic, and then use that as a back-end for multiple independent UIs. A well-designed back-end allows the UIs to be relatively lightweight and hopefully maintainable.

The trouble is, some of what makes "existing Linux desktop staples" is non-trivial UI work. And sometimes adding a back-end front-end split can add a lot of complexity.

In the end, I think the reason we see such division on the question of custom app VS custom skin VS reusable back-end is that there are serious trade-offs in each direction.

Glad that you have the list of best options for every task, but as you say - it took you several years to figure it out. That would be great to have some sane defaults for most of common everyday tasks without the need of long research and learning, so one can concentrate on what he really cares about(like IDE or image editor) rather than bein stuck choosing a media player that err..plays the media.

With all due respect, when have the stock apps ever been good enough on any OS? I spent 20 years using Windows, and the first thing I did upon getting any new desktop/laptop was immediately go and grab a bunch of apps that I needed. They weren't necessarily the "best" apps, either; my old Windows 7 laptop is still running Winamp as my music player because I've used it since 1998 and it still does what I need it to do.

One's preference for programs is really a matter of personal taste. You can try to make the stock programs "suck less", but I doubt you're ever going to really eliminate the need for third party programs. Distros like KaOS (KDE with all-QT apps) have tried, with limited success. The best thing any distro can do, IMO, is to have an extensive App Center and use a flexible packaging format such that it encourages more apps to support that format.

Still using Winamp as well.

At work, people get awed all the time - "wow, is that Winamp?" :D

And I keep thinking, what the hell are people using these days?

Spotify, Google Music, Apple Music, Pandora?

Before I had to worry about space and moving my music around. Now it's on every device. Has all my playlists, all the music I listened to + discover new stuff, friends can send me songs I might like, can even download for offline if I'm worried about not having internet, etc.

It's been a much better solution than playing everything in Winamp which I used forever or iTunes.

I was about to answer VLC and then I red your answer and realized I'm lagging 10 years behind.

VLC is one of the best open source programs ever written. I use it on mobile+notebook for video and music (320-encoded files on a 128 GB SD card). Youtube/many other apps are just not OK in quality.

> and whenever I get a chance, I tell people about all the great things about Linux and why it's better than Windows and the MacOS.

People like this bore me to death. Let's be frank - you're just biased and you're probably wrong, despite all your good intentions. What OS you prefer is a matter of taste and of choice, and there's no "better" or "worse" unless you're so narrow minded as to only measure an operating system's worth by the features that happen to put your chosen OS ahead. These days if I was a dedicated gamer I'd probably say Windows. In fact, after the Surface Studio presentation, it's tempting as a creative platform.

I used one form or another of Linux on my main desktops and laptops since 2002, until 2009. In 2009 I bought a Macbook and since then I've switched to OS X (or macOS) as my main OS of choice. I still install GNU coreutils on macOS, and still keep a separate desktop at home with Linux on it - appropriately named `lab` in my home network.

So, in 2016 my main laptop is a Macbook Air with macOS on which I do most of my work, my desktop is running various flavours of linux (arch which i keep the most updated, but also alpine, ubuntu, fedora... etc easily accessible in grub). Don't lecture us on what OS is better, we've made a decision and it doesn't have to be the same as yours.

> What OS you prefer is a matter of taste and of choice, and there's no "better" or "worse" unless you're so narrow minded as to only measure an operating system's worth by the features that happen to put your chosen OS ahead.

> Don't lecture us on what OS is better, we've made a decision and it doesn't have to be the same as yours.con

I would agree with that but you don't have to be so harsh, he may actually convince people with arguments as to why Linux is actually "better" (i.e. privacy), rather than "lecturing" them.

I don't think you should be telling him what to do and what not to do, unless he is lecturing you.