Everything I need works. My windows environment is an old installation of windows 7 on VirtualBox that I boot up about once every 2 months to get updates, then shut down again. That VM has cygwin, which I'd been using on Windows for a long time when I used it.
Everyone will have their own preferences, and I accept that. Claiming that "linux desktop sucks" and has for a long time, doesn't quite meet the reality of my daily (corporate) life. I am one data point, but certainly not the only one.
If I were, then distros like linux mint wouldn't exist. Nor any of the other desktop/user centric ones for that matter. But they do exist, and appear to be thriving.
As I said, preferences are personal. Linux desktop is quite productive for me.
My partner, who is a grade school teacher and is in no way interested in learning about technology, has been using it full time for 2 years now.
My dad, a 6 year user (4 years fulltime), same story about level of tech competence...
There are others. I suspect that you are expecting to not have to learn anything new and are looking for a visually identical Windows clone.
Most people are just using browsers and I don't know, maybe a spreadsheet once in a while? Primarily browsers. My dad casts videos to his chromecast and reads a few forums, checks his email.
Ubuntu just works for "normal" users. I installed it because I have to help him far, far less than I did when he had windows.
I suppose it comes down to what one knows and is used to, but for my part I don't see myself ever working regularly with Windows again I dis-enjoy using it that much. So all this talk about how bad Linux desktop is nonsense from my perspective. I like KDE. I like Mate. I like i3. I like Gnome. Doesn't really matter, a terminal and web browser and a small handful of tools is most of what I need. Especially if I can set it up as I'm used to. Which if windows were kept simple would probably be ok as long as Bash or like is around somewhere. But no. It has to be all gooped up and just... controlled. Not what I'm looking for in computing at all and not what I enjoy.
WAY more fun is getting file associations working, on corp systems where they fail to persist. I can't double-click a Python script and have it run, despite having the exact same registry settings that I have at home for .py, Python.File, etc.
Shrug I've been using it on my main machine (a laptop) for 8+ years now. Works well for me.
> Outside of admins and linux developers, Linux has no chance on PCs
While I'm ever so slightly afraid you might be a little right, I'm super thankful that Canonical keeps putting out excellent new releases.
I can relate to the quote and I use Linux.
I think the linux desktop user experience has improved exponentially over the last few years, you should give it another shot.
I think I've heard "you should give it another shot" every single year since.
Kiosks or super locked down experiences like ChromeOS have a decent chance at making an impact for some use cases (especially less technical/senior users)
But as a general purpose desktop OS ? Still no, thanks. It's not just the lack of major commercial desktop apps (especially in the creative space, where browser apps won't take over anytime soon)
It's also the fact that desktop Linux's priorities still largely mirror those of its left-brained developers, who don't value good design and human interface guidelines nearly as much as they should. Or as another commenter has put it : they have no taste.
To be fair, I'm sure (well, I hope) there are now some professionally trained UX/UI specialists at Canonical and other places, but by and large there's still this mentality that it's a soft skilled task that a dev is perfectly capable of doing if need be (and yet, devs are horrified when a web designer quickly cobbles some PHP snippets together and calls that development, as ops people are generally horrified when they see servers set up by developers :) )
The last and maybe most important issue is that good design is necessarily strongly opinionated, it needs a leader to make hard calls so that the user doesn't have to, and this is completely at odds with the Linux/OSS philosophy. And why Apple became so good at it, having a (not always benevolent) dictator at its helm for so long.
these are operating systems that reward expertise - it takes time and patience to get your workstation the way you want it. It's a time investment to learn it, to some it's worth the effort, to others it's not.
edit* and I will concede that the various linux desktop environments have learned a ton from apple's design and UX concepts, and some of them have branched off into very interesting directions.
Most wireless cards out there work just fine. When I had to use a laptop with a Broadcom chip for uni I used my Android phone as tethering (charging it as a bonus) and the guy sitting next to me just used a dongle smaller than his thumb.
Also, touch screens <3
Or many street bazaars around the globe.
Have you looked an a modern linux DE in the past 5 years? It's within subjective opinion as to which looks better. And a lot of time that opinion is "what the user has used before". And Windows is far from a smooth experience given how disrupted the Windows 10 UI changes were in Enterprise and Educational environments
Linux is hard to beat for a fully customizable programming environment. You can easily customize the look of a Linux desktop, but can't with Windows or Mac. Windows and Mac have both taken UI ideas that have been around on Linux for far longer.
Sure I probably cannot do it like I used to do with Slackware and fvwm on a rainy weekend, but I don't want to.
I want a full stack developer experience with OS Framework APIs that I know are going to be available everywhere, coupled with a nice IDE and graphical tooling.
It does matter how the whole looks to the user and linux was never really good at.
It sometimes takes a little bit of work, but it isn't that complicated. Linux is great at it, but you might have to do a little research.
An example of how to find that information: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+make+linux+look+good
Example desktops: https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-looking-Linux-desktop-y...
What windows and mac do is that you open new laptop and everything looks alright. After few weeks, I change the wallpaper and I am happy. That is zero "make it nice" work.
Make a visit to any Linux user's group, and someone can help set it up.
If you want to experiment with different kinds of windows managers (like xmonad or i3 for keyboard productivity), you have the option. With Windows or Mac, you lose many options.
Linux often has desktop features far before Windows and Mac, for example virtual desktops: Windows got them in version 10, Mac got them in 2007, but Linux had them since the 1990s.
I'm not trying to convince you to change -- just saying that it isn't complicated to make Linux look great, and there are always people available to help.
Virtual desktops were available in previous Winows if you care to install app. I don't think it is terribly important, I used them but most people did not cared even if they knew about it.
I know there are good friendly linux communities (and less good ones too).
I did like Mac's three-finger swipe at one point, but as soon as I discovered xmonad, I could see that there are faster ways than swiping. (press alt-n to go to desktop n) Also, I think OS X still limits the virtual desktops to one row, which is inefficient.
It comes down to personal choice, but for comparison, it can be a chore to learn new things when programming too, but learning those things can make using the computer better and easier in the end.
I'm not trying to convince you to switch -- just saying that Linux does have great-looking, very advanced UIs, that are not restrictive like on Windows or Mac. :)
I've used pre-1.0 KDE (and compiled it myself), seen Gnome pop up, tried a ton of WM's, and I try out some WM's and GUI-distro's at least once a year. Every time it comes down to: usable, but not great, and requires quite a bit of customization which I could redo for newer versions. When all you need is a terminal and a browser, it's probably fine, but I need a bit more than that to feel comfy.
Compared to the dominant desktop OS linux distros are beautiful and consistent. Windows doesn't even have a standard look and feel anymore. And if you don't like it you can tweak the whole desktop + apps in one place.
Of all possible complaints about Linux, you've picked this one? Come on.
My (corp-maintained) Linux desktop locks up under heavy load for every few days, usually recovers though. The person who sits next to me has it worse though.
And this is with standardized corp-bought hardware.
Any year now though.
I guess Windows just isn't ready for the desktop.
I have had a shot at building a standard desktop on top of ubuntu. My situation was easier than most in that we only had two desktops to support (a thinkpad and a dell laptop). still, making driver setup work seamlessly is hard. Imagine a company with twenty variations and an audit directive to not give root to users.
WSL has huge potential to this market. You get a linux ui and kernel api, and it complements your existing standard build strategy.
Personally I use Arch and i3, my desktop is riced to the point that is comfortable for me. I can stand up a new desktop in 10m after a clean arch install. I can replicate my full dev environment on any linode, droplet or aws machine in less than 5m at no cost.
It amazes me that people can call themselves 'productive' using microsoft systems. Every time I land on a windows box I feel like I'm in some ancient broken world.
Especially when basic things like taking a screenshot with your keyboard, as well as setting up hot keys, has been broken for a year[2]. The eOS team appears to be more focused on forcing Windows 10-style OS updates that download in the background - even over metered connections - and force you to restart[3].
[1] https://wefunkster.deviantart.com/art/OSe-Light-Xtrlght-GTK-...
[2] https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/questions/7703/unable...
[3] https://www.bountysource.com/issues/43123447-automatic-secur...
Tomorrow Google could release ChromeOS using another kernel and no one would notice.
The only restriction is that the kernel needs to support the official set of NDK APIs for Android apps.
Aesthetics is very subjective topic. But we can all agree that since Windows' Vista the focus hasn't been on eyecandy but rather functionality. Expensive visual effects are now removed and the UX is very plain, with not a lot of room for customization.
I personally use this theme:
https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1013706/
Contains a GTK 3 theme, icons and cursors. Looks way better than Windows.
... but this works amazingly well :)
$ flatpak install flathub com.valvesoftware.Steam
The Desktop/Laptop market is not nearly as important as it used to be, but within that space, Microsoft's dominance is about as strong as ever. Apple might have been able to take a dent out of it if they were committed, but they decided the obscene margins on iPhones were more important (and I can't entirely blame them).
Outside of admins and linux developers, Linux has no chance on PCs. Every year that passes convinces me more of this. We are going on the 20th "Year of Linux on the Desktop". If they were going to do it, they'd have done it by now.