The thing is I love linux on a desktop (if by desktop we mean not-a-server and thus laptops are in context as well), in fact I prefer it over OSX... right up until I plug in an external monitor, or try to do a video chat only to realize a driver literally does not exist for my MBP camera, or my IDE just kinda flickers randomly for no discernible reason, ec.

Walled-garden hardware like Apple has set up certainly has advantages, but given that windows is installed on a far greater variety of hardware than linux distros, I'm kinda surprised its more stable. I guess other than the obvious fact that everybody working on a given linux distro is doing it for free (right? that's my impression).

Most of my troubles vanished when I switched from Ubuntu to Debian. Only been about two weeks but loving it so far. Might finally be able to abandon OSX!

(note: I'm a total noob when it comes to OSs and whatnot - not that kind of programmer!)

>I guess other than the obvious fact that everybody working on a given linux distro is doing it for free (right? that's my impression).

People working on most components of the desktop Linux stack are being paid for it. Think kernel -> video drivers -> systemd -> wayland -> GNOME. All of those groups have paid employees. They are evidently understaffed.

Wait, really? By who? For what reason?

Red Hat, Intel, AMD, SUSE, Samsung, Canonical etc.

Obviously, a lot of paid work is done on low-level plumbing, because Linux is hugely profitable as a server, infrastructure, or embedded operating system for a lot of companies. Graphics infrastructure (KMS, Wayland, X11, etc.) is useful for companies who embed Linux in various appliances (set-op boxes, etc.). Red Hat probably invests in GNOME because for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation and dogfooding.

>For what reason?

If your programmers can make your project their job, you don't have to worry about the amount of time they have to contribute.

RedHat would be one company that pays for that. FOSS has yearly report on such things, if you want to google it. (I am too lazy now)

There is a LOT that can be done to improve desktop linux, but I think in this case, at least according to the article, the difficulties were largely political, not technical.

In the general case, though, I think the biggest problem is that the community that uses and works on the Linux Desktop doesn't actually want it to improve.

If you're an open source developer, for instance, why would you work to improve or maintain software X when you can create an alternative that does things slightly differently? That looks a lot more impressive on a resume. And I'd swear many Linux Desktop users wish it was even more complicated and fragile either because they love troubleshooting or just so they can virtue signal that they're leet. I mean, why else would /r/unixporn exist?

I think this is largely an issue with X rather than users wanting to show off, I think wayland (while not perfect) can really help with developing easy to use desktop enviroments.

Also not everybody who uses "complicated" setups care about "leetness", personally I use i3 (and alot of mods, customizations) because nothing compares to the ease of use + functionality for me.

I personally want more linux desktop adoption, Ive switched my parents over, trying to convert my brother.

One of the things that has struck me with getting used to i3, even after a decade and a half "faking it" by mostly running apps maximized anyway, is that it is changing my thinking, not least due to the API. E.g. I recently started writing a text editor (because, why not), and it struck me that I really don't have a reason to support multiple windows. I added "splitting buffers" today by having it exec i3-msg to start another copy of itself.

I think what is really hampering Linux on the desktop is trying to play catch-up with Windows and OS X instead of rethinking the processes.

I suspect you'd have been better off switching them to ChromeOS. Most people do not need a desktop in 2017. There was only a brief window in the late 90s and early aughties when "most" people did, but that was only because of the internet. We have better consumer-oriented devices for that now. Desktops are for people who do work, hobbyists, developers, and the kind of gamer who is basically the hotrod-guy of the computing world. If someone actually wants to make the Linux Desktop a good desktop OS, they'll have to stop trying to make things "easy" for the strawman of the "average" user and instead make something for those people.

And the thing with ChromeOS and Android, is that having Linux as a kernel, it is just an implementation detail.

Given their managed userspace, Google can switch to something else and only OEMs would notice.

While I largely agree with your observation, the problem with ChromeOS is that not everybody wants to ship their behavioral data in real-time to Google. So, there is is still a place for a basic Linux-based family desktop that just runs a privacy-friendly browser.

That's not a desktop, it's a kiosk. Linux is actually fine for these kinds of single-tasking embedded use-cases.

But seriously, who does that? I don't know anyone who primarily uses a desktop computer just to browse the web. That's what tablets and phones are for. ChromeOS is just one of those with a bigger screen and a keyboard, which is why it is perfect for them.

"Family desktop" was only a thing in the brief period between the internet becoming popular with consumers and the first iPhone. Outside of that period, multi-user desktops (or microcomputers, if you recall the 80s) are an extreme edge case.

Don't forget about the educational market. ChromeOS is very popular in schools because of how locked down it is, and computer labs in schools are one of the few environments where multi-user desktops thrive.

Just in US schools though.

I hardly seen any Chromebook on sale, or being used in coffee shops, around European countries.

In Germany when they are on sale, they happen to be a single unit, discounted multiple times until it somehow disappears from the shop.

> If you're an open source developer, for instance, why would you work to improve or maintain software X when you can create an alternative that does things slightly differently? That looks a lot more impressive on a resume.

One could argue that this is one of the driving causes behind the current JavaScript churn madness.

That wasn't my read of the situation. Bottom line is, the administration realize that the cost savings promised might not materialized, and that most of IT problems could be resolved more cheaply by just moving to better version of windows

> the difficulties were largely political, not technical

Not all of the difficulties were political. Quoting from the article: "... Along the way, it was reported that 20% of the users of Limux were not happy or satisfied with it; other reports had the number at 40%. ..."

Quite true.

Slackware 2.0 was my first distribution, and after a decade of FOSS zealotry, I just gave up and went back to Windows.

Linux on laptops is still an hit and miss, specially in what concerns graphic, hybrid GPUs and power savings.

I think you need to cherry pick hardware.

My last two laptops have given me the best software/hardware experience ever, even better than Tiger/Leopard days on MacBooks, and they run Linux.

Three tricks: i) cherry pick hardware (all Intel); ii) minimal userspace (tiled wm + firefox + emacs + terminal); iii) distros you build & customize from the ground up (arch/slack/nix/guix).

All those together remove a lot of complexity vs a regular desktop setup, so few moving parts that can break. Furthermore, the ability nix gives to set up the system / configure packages declaratively and have the possibility to rollback is a total killer feature.

Moving to MacOS or Windows would feel like a huge step backwards due to this feature alone. The absence of decent tiling window managers on those platforms is also a dealbreaker for me.

Not even that helps.

Netbooks were released each with its own Linux flavour, thanks to lack of driver ABI, it was almost impossible to replace them with more common distributions.

I have an Asus 1516B, sold with Ubuntu, that I had to fight with Firefox for proper hardware acceleration and being able to wake after hibernation.

A Dell developer laptop could have been another option, but they are always unavailable in European shops.

Intel GPUs are no match for good 3D acceleration, case in point, what they just announced with AMD.

Windows can also rollback without issues, just keep the snapshots and shadow file system configured.

OS X can easily rollback with Time Machine.

> A Dell developer laptop could have been another option, but they are always unavailable in European shops.

Never ever order something from the dell website. Always seek out to either A. and Dell distributor or B. Dell directly (most likely you pay less than the price on the website).

Also there is a Ubuntu Dell Workstation in the European shops. (It's just a little bit hidden) http://www.dell.com/de-de/shop/dell-notebooks/xps-13/spd/xps...

Directly under notebooks 13" the simple versions it's the newest and besides the fact that it's a little bit noisy it's really really great, it even works with the dell wd15 dock just perfectly.

Thanks for the link, I keep it around for when the time to replaces the netbook comes around.

However, the prices being listed give an edge to Windows installations, even though we cannot compare Windows 10 Home with Ubuntu.

> Intel GPUs are no match for good 3D acceleration, case in point, what they just announced with AMD.

For regular tasks I find Intel GPUs great. Plus they consume little power.

NVIDIA is also OK on the open Nouveau driver. And when I do deep learning on a workstation, NVIDIA's closed drivers are good.

> Windows can also rollback without issues, just keep the snapshots and shadow file system configured.

Nix rollbacks have absolutely nothing to do with filesystem-level rollbacks.

Let me ask you something: doesn't it bother you that something like Nix is necessary for the problems Nix claims to solve? Why is a system so fragile as to require what Nix provides?

If you stay in the bleeding edge some setups might break. E.g. package A doesn't work with library B anymore unless you switch back to another version.

I have very rarely experienced this problem, and in 8 years time I have never had to roll back any critical packages like the kernel, firefox, emacs or any system utilities.

It's not something that bothers me because it's so rare, and I understand it's the product of very complicated setups and bleeding edge configurations.

Nix is mostly valuable for simple declarative configurations, the ability to alter package build recipes quickly, and for package and setup reproducibility.

That's my whole point though: why does this library conflict occur at all? Why do you need such a convoluted tool just to have a reproducible setup? Doesn't something about the nature of that situation seem off to you? Like, Nix solves a problem that maybe only exists because the system itself is fundamentally flawed?

The problem is that after a decade of FOSS zealotry (1994-2007) I couldn't really go back to Windows. Windows is now fundamentally incompatible with how my brain works. I have used macOS desktops from 2007 onwards, though I am annoyed by general bugginess (Preview.app seems to have degenerated even further from the already stripped version in Sierra) and Apple's Mac price inflation.

At home I have started using the Dell Linux Workstation that I had lying around (mostly as a headless server) more and more the last few months. I run Wayland and replaced the nVidia card by and AMD FirePro and it has mostly been smooth sailing.

(For some reason, despite being a rolling distro, Arch seems to be more stable than most distributions I have used in the past.)

Of course, I wouldn't dare to switch to Linux on laptops (yet).

FWIW, I just setup a sweet Arch + Xmonad rice on my MBP mid-2012 and it's working really, really well. Almost negligible footprint (<200 MB for sure, with a few background daemons). Arch has truly been a breath of fresh air. Every package that I installed has a reason. No cruft.

You cannot compare Slackware 2.0 with the current version (14.2). Setup is way easier today.

As if that was the only distribution I have ever used since 1995.

Yes, setup is way easier, and yet many of the hardware issues, specially with laptops stay the same.

Government users do not generally need sophisticated desktops. Most of them probably handle the same documents and work with the same systems all day, every day with few deviations.