Unfortunately, that alone isn't quite the same 'smooth' experience as Windows and macOS because:
- the only somewhat noob friendly out of the box experience that has this setup is the latest Fedora (at the moment)
- you need to be concerned about whether your graphics card is compatible
- many Linux apps aren't built using modern GTK3 or Qt which will result in some jarring/inconsistent experience when doing actual work in your desktop environment
- there are just fewer quality applications to work with on Linux, and cross-platform applications often are less graphically pleasing than their Windows and especially macOS equivalents
- there's no equivalent of Macbook or Microsoft Precision trackpads on Linux, which to me are part of the subjective 'smooth' experience on Macbooks or recent properly equipped Windows laptops
Wayland in my experience really solves the performance/smoothness problems the Linux desktop has. But there's still a long way to go even after Wayland becomes the default on the Linux desktop.
But seriously it's hard to create quality software especially if you are not as rich as Apple or MS
I support the theory of elementary (UI/designer led, unified HIGs, encouraging payment for development of the OS and the general ecosystem, and the emphasis on polished, hassle-free computing) but in practice it's just not there. They need to sort out bugs before taking on new features/designs.
I'm actually just considering what distribution to recommend to an inexperienced user. I would recommend elementary in a heartbeat if serious bugs were fixed within weeks, instead they go on for years.
Has it become worse over the two last years?
While Linux's VESA driver got tons of screen tearing issues and generally poor drawing speeds, Mac OS (this was 10.4) was sitting there drawing a fully composited desktop with no slowdowns whatsoever. At that same time, Linux required special graphics hardware with beta drivers to even get any form of desktop compositing working.
What we've seen are ill-fated attempts to make those desktops work well on touch devices. That's what Unity was all about. On the other hand Apple has refused to make macOS run on touch screens.
I respect that others like it, -would even vote argue for coworkers to get a Mac even if it is slightly more expensive than my machine if thats what they are used to and like, - but passing it around as a benchmark for a good desktop gets a bit tiring.
If deep pockets was all it took to make an OS succeed, Windows Phone wouldn't be dead.
On the desktop, OSX, Windows, and most Linux variants are all good enough. What matters is application support. For my job, 50% of the applications I use run on Linux, 75% run on OSX (natively), and 100% work on Windows. Can you guess which OS I use at work?
Thanks to Valve, Linux has a real shot at picking up some steam in the gaming space. Without Adobe and Microsoft, it probably won't go anywhere on corporate or consumer desktops.
Nicely done :-)
Make that 110% if you include Visual Studio. The degree of polish that Visual Studio has just isn't available anywhere else. At some point early this year I was considering Linux+VSCode. VS2017, with F5-to-Docker debug, launched and everything else looks like a giant pain in the ass once again. The Azure integration is anticompetitive but, wow, is it also so much better than the alternative.
XCode is a hilarious joke that Apple is playing on developers.
Linux IDEs, while much better than XCode, would have been competitive in 2003 (unless you use Java/IntelliJ exclusively).
It's no wonder that Windows is the only platform where developers shy away from text editors - it's the only platform where the alternatives to text editors don't absolutely suck. It's really not that text editors are better than IDEs - an good IDE and a good text editor are complementary, not competitive.
Where I'm going with this is that a good IDE begets a quality application. That 100% doesn't arise from the ether. Alongside your game argument comes another indicator of this: Windows has a very mature graphical debugger[1] (having been growing it since DX9) where, so far as I have read, both competing operating systems lack this functionality entirely.
Balmer might have looked like a fool with his "developers, developers, developers" dance. The thing is that he was completely correct - instead of mocking his monkey dancing, Apple and Linux should have been paying attention to the people that he was praising.
If Ubuntu want to compete in this space the developer experience must be fixed.
I like Windows more than before but people saying VS is fantastic are starting to annoy me.
My VS crashed 3 times today (!). This comes on top of almost not having any refactoring support unless you buy ReSharper.
I was really excited to get to try .Net three months ago.
Now I'm really looking forward to go back to Java and Netbeans (even if I will miss some things.)
It's no wonder that Windows is the only platform where developers shy away from text editors
This developer love Netbeans on KDE.
This is why vim is a hell of a lot more useful to me on linux than on windows. In Linux, I actually prefer vim over sublime. In windows, I use sublime over vim.
It's not simply a matter of polish, the environments are completely different, and therefore the tools that are successful on the platforms are completely different.
When an IDE doesn't do something the way you want it done and you find yourself fighting it, I can totally understand not wanting to deal with it. On the other hand, if your IDE works the way you want it to, it can increase your productivity.
I wish this were true. A great development environment (integrated or not) will get you to the finish line faster, but it doesn't automatically produce quality. Have you downloaded anything from the Windows Store lately?
You (and many others) don't like XCode, yet developers using it have produced some marvelous software on macOS. For example, I think The Omni Group folks have made some applications that work great, look great, and are a joy to use.
And that's why Linux will never stop the experimentation: Lots of the people actually writing the code wants to experiment and don't want to copy Windows. You will never get unity (pardon the pun) out of a group whose only unifying characteristic is that we don't want to use Windows or OS X.
> Please stop innovation for innovation's sake and just make Windows 98 again.
That's been tried. Remember Lindows? It even tried for Windows compatibility via Wine.
That's fine, but Linux is never going to achieve any significant marketshare (and thus get support from hardware and software makers) as long as it tries to standardize on weird UIs. Having some weird options for those who want to mess with them is great, just don't make them the standard. That's the problem with Linux: for some stupid reason, the distros have mostly standardized on Gnome3, which is a resource hog and horrible to use, and not an easy transition for a non-technical Windows user. If they adopted KDE instead, Linux would probably get a lot more popularity.
Individual distro's will pick whatever they want. Several have tried to copy Windows to various extent (with Lindows, later Linspire, being the most extreme example as they tried for binary compatibility via Wine).
> If they adopted KDE instead, Linux would probably get a lot more popularity.
I they adopted KDE instead to the exclusion of Gnome it'd alienate a huge amount of Linux users. They're not doing this randomly. But as it stands, Gnome and KDE are both viable alternatives on most of the major distros, with varying levels of support.
That's the entire problem! We have ONE standard kernel, granted with a few modifications on Android. We have one standard C library (several implementations for edge use cases). We have one standard C++ runtime (and the clang libc++ is completely compatible). On every layer of the stack we have one standard, with one standard implementation, except when you reach the top when it becomes and ungodly mess. Nothing really interoperates in a standard way. Hell, it took until 2006 IIRC to settle on one standard audio API - pulse. Before we run off to reimplement everything yet again, there should be standards of interoperability in place.
For example, why does Firefox not use the KDE open file dialog? I run KDE, I expect to get the KDE open file dialog not the GNOME one. Oh, it's because there's no standard "open a file" API call. Because every time someone reinvents the desktop, they reinvent it from the ground up without trying to interoperate. This is probably why Firefox also doesn't always obey my file associations set via Dolphin, the KDE file browser.
Yes, let's have unlimited customizability, but we need standardized interfaces for basic desktop functionality. A forest, rather than a dozen walled gardens.
This is completely wrong. It's like saying there's no standard init system. Except for a few weird exceptions like Slackware, there is: systemd, because all the mainstream distros have adopted it now. Similarly, there is a standard DE, and that's Gnome, because all the mainstream distros have adopted it (Debian, Fedora, OpenSuse, Ubuntu now).
As for alienation, they're alienating everyone who wants something that works like Windows, and they're alienating tons of Linux users who hate Gnome3, which is why we now have the ridiculous mess of not one, but TWO Gnome forks: MATE and Cinnamon, in addition to KDE, LXDE, and Xfce. KDE is not a "viable alternative" on most distros, as it's very poorly supported, if at all. It's not a first-class DE on any mainstream distro that I know of; within Ubuntu-land it's a separate "Kubuntu" spin that's not well supported, and within Mint-land it's the "Mint KDE Edition" which always lags behind the Cinnamon and MATE versions. I hear you can get it to work on Fedora, sorta. Sorry, but that does not make it equivalent to the support that Gnome enjoys. And as the other poster points out, many applications assume you're using Gnome, such as Firefox with its crappy Gnome file dialog.
>They're not doing this randomly.
No, they're doing it because Red Hat is pushing Gnome hard, and because there's a lot of trend-following in Linux without thinking about what's really good for the community and Linux adoption overall.
On the other hand I switch away from every distro or at least desktop that does "change" for the sake of "change". I prefer a stable system with optional changes to a mess that breaks functionality with every other update. Sadly some of the programs I use were written for GNOME or at least with GTK, so I am still affected every time GNOME is "improved".
If you want to avoid change, see if the GNOME/GTK apps you use are available in forks for Mate or Cinnamon - if they are, chances are they'll change far less.
Disagree strongly.
I'd much rather want Microsoft to release a polished supported KDE 5 or Gnome 3 than the other way around.
The thing that attracted me to free software was first the price tag (esp when I was a student) and later speed and usability.
Hell no!