Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2020 edition

Re:Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2020 edition by caro_douglos on Sunday May 31, 2020 @06:31AM (#23368572)

I don’t recommend Linux as a desktop anymore (free99 sold me for a while though).

Still beats windows on older hardware..when it comes to minimal browser boxes Linux is still the best.

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Re:Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2020 edition by Sebb767 on Sunday May 31, 2020 @07:29AM (#23368843)

I can't really agree here. I'm very much the definition of a power user and I love the easy accessible configuration (text files FTW) and the overall customizability of it. Working on Windows with hard-to-find GUIs, no tiling WM and overall lack of system control feels like a grind to me.

Sure, some of that is habit, but I've never felt like a Windows machine was truly "mine".

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Re:Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2020 edition by pizza234 on Sunday May 31, 2020 @07:01AM (#23368707)

That's a bit throwing the baby with the bathwater. There is a significant amount of people who use their machines in extremely simple ways, ie. web browsing. Desktop Linux is perfectly fine for that.

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Re:Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2020 edition by Xolvixica on Sunday May 31, 2020 @07:16AM (#23368778)

Unfortunately I have to disagree with even that. Firefox (the default browser in most Linux distros) can't do hardware accelerated video, so you tend to get tearing/stuttering or at the very least a higher CPU load when watching YouTube for example, compared to say Windows, resulting in increased battery consumption if a laptop or at the very least increase fan speeds.

I know it's being worked on with Firefox having acceleration worked on in Wayland, but right now, if even the simplest and most common use-cases have major downsides compared to Windows/OS X, it's hard to justify moving to a worse experience. Windows rules with vendor support, that's just how it is. I've grown tired of having to compromise.

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Re:Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2020 edition by yellowapple on Sunday May 31, 2020 @09:42AM (#23369540)

> Firefox (the default browser in most Linux distros) can't do hardware accelerated video

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firefox#Hardware_video_...

In short: Firefox supports it under Wayland since version 75 (and for more formats since 76).

Not that I've really noticed this being an issue under X11.

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Re:Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2020 edition by ubercow13 on Sunday May 31, 2020 @07:21AM (#23368804)

AFAIK OSX hides from userland the support for VP9 decode acceleration present in the Macbook's hardware, Youtube's primary codec these days, so now Firefox supports VAAPI under Wayland it is already ahead of OSX/Macbooks in this regard.

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Re:Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2020 edition by pizza234 on Sunday May 31, 2020 @03:16PM (#23371846)

I need to test this (I didn't know about the hardware acceleration), however, first: tearing and stuttering are different things.

Tearing required, for a very long time, to be configured manually in the Xorg configuration. However, on 20.04 now it's not needed anymore (I don't know why; I've just verified it on Nvidia and Intel GPUs).

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