> copy paste with a highlight+middle mouse button is frankly awesome in GNOME

Oh my gosh, this is my least favorite thing about using gnome! I accidentally paste all the time and can't turn it off particularly easily. Very sad.

It’s a generic feature of X available in all desktop environments (essentially there’s two copy-paste mechanism which you can use independently). Much easier to use than manual C-c C-v, especially if you have a third mouse button also on your laptop.

And this is the problem. There is zero thought being given to different usage scenarios, and when it is, it's a chaotic solution that works some of the time. How do you middle-click-paste if you are on a trackpad with only two buttons, for example?

I'm only picking on this to illustrate the point: things are hacked together at almost every level for a workstation. This is why "The Year of the Linux Desktop" never happened.

In stark contrast, I am much, much happier with Linux as a server machine than as a workstation, and prefer it to any others.

I know for sure that in CDE with SunOS and HP-UX middle click was for paste. I think also on SGI with Irix, but that is going back to 1994 when I was a young teen so I don't remember exactly. Middle click to paste also worked on some linuxes, which is why it was important to get a 3 button mouse even though the middle button did nothing on windows. I want to say that "middle click to paste" is and old unix convention, but I only have the 2.5 examples.

Middle click to paste is indeed an old convention. Xterm supports it, so I suspect it goes all the way back to the early days of the X Window System, c. 1984.

I don't have a problem with middle click being a backwards-compatible convention. It's that the option to change it is non-obvious, and therefore excludes laptop users.

As a counter-example: Much earlier versions of Windows had a menu in the top left corner. The shortcut to close a window used to be double-clicking in that corner. In Windows 7 (not sure about 8 or 10), that menu button/icon is gone. Of course, you can close a windows with the X in the right corner, but the old shortcut still works even though there is seemingly nothing there.

I can't remember where I read this, but I always think of it when it comes to UX design:

Always have more than one way to do the same thing in a UI. Users will pick whichever works better for their worklow.

I wasn't defending it. I'm familiar with it and use it occasionally, but I don't think I would have made that design choice.

hmm, horses for courses. I thought popular thinking had moved on from the perl philosophy of "there's more than one way to do it" to "let's reduce complexity and errors by just having one way to do it". While having a CLI and GUI might be good for two different UIs what's the point of having two ways to do the same thing?

The windows X is more of a backwards compatibility thing I imagine, because it makes no sense to have an invisible menu in the top left corner.

There are two ways of doing copy/paste. The middle clicking and Ctrl+C/V.

>How do you middle-click-paste if you are on a trackpad with only two buttons, for example?

Tap twice and drag on the second tap to select.

Tap with three fingers to paste.

Don't use the buttons.

Why on earth is there not a way to turn this off? I could be a bit understanding if there was just no UI option for this and I had to make an edit to an X conf file, but it's baffling that there just doesn't seem to be a way at all to turn it off. Some applications like Firefox let you change middle-click to autoscroll but that doesn't help outside of Firefox. I'm so worried I'm going to highlight my password and then absent-mindedly middle click and paste it into a chat twenty minutes later!

You can turn it of in gnome-tweak-tool

> Batteries - yeah, Windows laptops usually don't have amazing battery life and it can even be slightly worse under Linux, however if you're working in a mode where you laptop is 99% plugged in and you just need occasionally a couple of hours from it, it's quite doable, which I'd imagine is the use-case for most "workstation" usage scenarios.

Unfortunately, it turns out this usage pattern is terrible for the battery.

> Unfortunately, it turns out this usage pattern is terrible for the battery.

If you let it sufficiently (not fully!) discharge at least once a month, I don't see why it would be particularly terrible for the battery, what am I missing?

As far as I am aware, letting it discharge is only for calibration purposes (to ensure the battery gauge reads correctly).

I've been using my laptop battery for about three years with exactly this pattern, and what once lasted ~4 hours on a charge now lasts about 25 minutes.

>- wireless networking - works great if you're willing to do a bit of research before buying, instead of just dropping Linux on any garbage PC and expecting it to work flawlessly, (why won't you try that with macOS and report back?)

Why doesn't Linux track actual hardware proved to be compatible. Each year the same 'bit of research' with no guarantees at all. Oh, wait, Linux does not — because it isn't a Product.

> Why doesn't Linux track actual hardware proved to be compatible.

Sure it does [1]. The "bit of research" involves finding out if your desired machine has one of the many chips known to work flawlessly, which shouldn't be a problem, unless you don't mind what you spend your money on and just buy impulsively.

There are also chipset manufactures which are known to be more friendly than others, for example almost any modern Intel Wireless chip will work just fine.

Even for generally unfriendly OEMs, you can find amazingly clear documentation [2].

> Oh, wait, Linux does not

Again, you just asserted stuff without any evidence, see above.

> because it isn't a Product

Not sure by what definition of "product" you're going by, (if any), but you can absolutely get commercial support from a number of companies i.e. Canonical, RedHat, SuSE and even Oracle if you so desire.

[1] - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessCardsSupp... [2] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/broadcom_wireless

Must confess that 10 years ago I lost around 5 years in deep linux setup & programming, and I know all that you say. Neither [1] nor [2] do not list recent specific hardware models, I mean, notebooks and PCs, not chips or boards. Regular user has to unpack the device and `lspci -vnn -d 14e4:` (amazingly clear for regular user?), or something in live-usb system console at the store under manager's sight to maybe estimate whether this wifi is able to work with specific distro, which alone is a big question until you try it. Repeat these steps for all the hardware in potential purchase, and good luck to find all the specs, because often it is just i5/16Gb/13". There also are unresearchable timebombs like fast battery discharge and sleep issues under non-supported OSes.

"Product" is at least a site like easylinux.com, where you see that in late 2016 you can buy compatible X,Y and almost compatible Z (bios-only fan control), and in 2015 there were A,B,C, and in 2014 D was the best choice. Please click on direct link, torrent or ftp to download a distro image that already contains all the specific drivers and software.

Obviously, I'm unable to provide any evidence for something that doesn't exist.

> Must confess that 10 years ago I lost around 5 years in deep linux setup & programming, and I know all that you say.

I am afraid you'll find the Linux of today is much different than a decade ago.

In regards to known working laptops, you mean something like this[1], this[2], this[3] or this[4] ?

Also you can just buy from [5] or [6] and have Linux preinstalled with all the correct drivers.

[1] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Category:Laptops [2] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(2016)#XPS_... [3] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HP_Spectre_x360_ap012dx [4] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook [5] - https://system76.com/laptops [6] - https://www.entroware.com/store/laptops

And honestly you can just ask the community on Reddit/IRC/Distroo forums etc. about their experience with the model you want to buy, is that really a problem if you're a "Pro" user spending serious money on the machine?

It honestly just looks like you're too lazy to look. Or maybe you just made up your mind and refuse to budge even when provided evidence to the contrary - I honestly do not understand why you engage in a discussion then, you've already made up your mind.

I'm interested in Ubuntu LTS or Debian stable, not in school-rolled Arch that is known to be broken on each update. Second, it's wiki is filled with anecdotal tips (not even tips) that cover no real issues and provide no idea from which hardware to select. You should click on every configuration to check it, but no one will do. Because it is just words without any customer review or experience. Call it lazy, don't mind.

I'm watching local linux community for years despite not using it, and from what I see, Arch and blah-blah-wiki are still no Products. Curious if you really use this Arch and selected hw by its wiki, or you just googled for me, writing from ubuntu on 10-year old thinkpad. Locals can't really tell what to buy, because virtually everyone except those having ancient thinkpads have at least one issue. Some sit with charger always attached, some can't sleep, some have crashes because nvidia-blob, some because nouveau-blob, others just bought macbook and have no problems trolling linuxoids from osx.

5-6 seem to be not presented in my country.

I can spend some money on recent notebook (but don't get that 'serious' and 'pro' arguments, because we talk about regular user and regular hw) after just your hype, but what an idiot will I feel myself when it will lose wifi too often or fail to sleep on close. I understand you, arguing for linux on desktop is hard, because desktop is still few% of enthusiasts. Statistics prove it all.

> Arch that is known to be broken on each update

Arch has been rock solid for me for 5 years. You just seem to repeat stereotypes.

> Because it is just words without any customer review or experience.

The words have been written from experience.../head against wall/

> still no Products.

WTF is with this "products" - every Linux distro is a "product", even the kernel is a "product" if you will. I told you if you want professional support pay Canonical or RedHat, but you shouldn't need it if you have basic comprehension skills.

> Curious if you really use this Arch and selected hw by its wiki, or you just googled for me, writing from ubuntu on 10-year old thinkpad.

I indeed run it on VERY modern HW and am typing this from [this baby][1] and even run my home server on Arch, because it's been super stable for me, (on [2] if you're interested...)

[1] - https://www.obsidian-pc.com/en/portatil-clevo-p751dm2-g [2] - http://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/nuc/nuc-kit-nuc6i7k...

> Locals can't really tell what to buy, because virtually everyone except those having ancient thinkpads have at least one issue.

Buy any Clevo or a Dell Dev Edition or even a modern HP laptop and you'll be fine.

> others just bought macbook and have no problems trolling linuxoids from osx.

As someone who has to use a MBP for iOS dev, I'll be very careful with the trolling, since there was no release of macOS since 10.6 without major issues, including Sierra. Not even talking 10.7, which was worse than Vista.

> I can spend some money on recent notebook (but don't get that 'serious' and 'pro' arguments, because we talk about regular user and regular hw)

You do what you will - we're talking about a pro here, because this is a post in context of people being disappointed with the newest MBP not being Pro enough for the "Pros".

> what an idiot will I feel myself when it will lose wifi too often or fail to sleep on close.

You have NO IDEA of the irony of this - my 2015 MBP randomly looses WiFi every second day or so, google, "macbook pro loses wifi", it as I am far from alone.

> arguing for linux on desktop is hard

It is in some ways, but I don't care what OS you run and have no desire to "convert you ", I just want to disprove the perceptions that were true a decade ago and have long since been resolved.

Just to give an example of how frustrating this is, i.e. "I tried PulseAudio in 2005 and it sucked, PulseAudio suckzzz!", yeah, it's 2016 and it no longer sucks, in fact it's pretty awesome.

Copy is Ctrl+C in your browser, in your notepad, in your IDE, but it's Ctrl-Shift-C in your terminal.

Paste is Ctrl+V in your browser, in your notepad, in your IDE, but it's Ctrl-Shift-V in your terminal.

Now copy a bunch of IPs from your AWS page into terminal to ssh into them for an hour or so.

Fuck that shit, I'm getting a second mortgage for the MBP and a set of 19 dongles.

It's been years since I've used linux, but my muscle memory for copying/pasting in the terminal is still there, to the point of it being the reason I can't use non Mac layout keyboards in OSX. I'll just keep pressing shift if I'm in the terminal.