I agree, and what really sold me was Plasma Desktop, as someone that couldn't stand KDE 3 & 4. It used to be that GNOME was the desktop environment you could turn into a Windows or macOS clone, but it looks like that switched with GNOME 3 and KDE 5.
I have Plasma Desktop set up[1] to take advantage of my macOS muscle memory when it comes to the GUI and keyboard short cuts, and I couldn't imagine going back.
> Linux is rocking the desktop hard, if you haven't tried it in a few years or just maintain a Windows installation to play games-- seriously give it a try. It's wonderful.
It's not just developers or power users that Linux shines for, either. I'm of the opinion that if ChromeOS would suit a person's needs, so would a polished distribution like Ubuntu along with a browser like Firefox or Chrome. Ubuntu has an app store-like interface to install Zoom, Slack, and other work apps.
Looks good, allows me some tweaking, runs surprisingly light. Although, still some annoying bugs, the most annoying being when I open an application on my 1440p screen, KDE often opens it on my second monitor for no real reason.
This here is my most hated thing about KDE. I run it on Debian so my version is pretty old compared, has it been fixed in newer versions? I have been thinking about switching to Neon, but I don't care for the Ubuntu base verses vanilla Debian.
I've found XFCE and cinnamon are the most stable/reliable DE's. I'm rocking Manjaro cinnamon right now.
Aside from that it was great, and there was probably some configuration option to stop that behaviour but I could not find it.
Actually I quite enjoyed Cinnamon, I cannot even remember what things I disliked but I'd just saw the new release of KDE and those small niggles were enough of an excuse to switch back to KDE hah.
It's why I went back to cinnamon. I mean in the realms of the phrase "Fuck, marry, kill", I'd fuck KDE, marry cinnnamon, and kill MATE.
That said I do hope endeavouros or others can fill Manjaro's immense boots.
It's really hard not to have some bias, but I used OSX for work for about five years, currently been using Windows at work for about two years, and I still find Gnome to be the most usable and aesthetically pleasing desktop by far.
After helping my friend setting up KDE I discovered the level of polish and customizability that KDE now offers. That same day I installed KDE on my own machine and soon after removed every GNOME component from my system. I have been using it the last few weeks and really feel at home!
That's Linux empowering your computer. So that simple.
This was my reason for not using KDE for years. The UI these days is cleaner and leaner, rivaling XFCE in resource usage.
> I still find Gnome to be the most usable and aesthetically pleasing desktop by far.
This was my initial impression, as well. But if you want to do something that the GNOME team feels is superfluous, you're either out of luck or depending on some plugin that will break your DE if you upgrade GNOME.
On Plasma Desktop, almost everything is configurable, but it isn't overwhelming and disorganized like it was in KDE 3 & 4. There's a considerable amount of polish. Plugin bugs don't take down the entire desktop environment, either.
Note when I say "written for" I'm not even really speaking very technically - lots of programs written nowadays won't really have any particular dependency on a library that's only available on a certain OS. But if you're using an application that's written in a platform-agnostic way but the programmer only develops it and uses it on a Mac, it's usually easy to tell. Both in terms of system interop/integration and how bugs are prioritized.
So, even if people do things you don't like on their linux install, it's still far better to have as many people on linux as we can get.
For a good number of people it's just better than Windows and macOS.
This has been my experience recently as well. For laptops at least, as long as you buy a system with known good Linux support, the vast majority of the common complaints I see are not really valid.
If you need macOS or Windows to run a specific application exclusive to that platform, great. If your software all runs on Linux, you can gain a lot of freedom and privacy for little effort these days.
And that is where the problem lies. With Windows I can buy pretty much any laptop and expect it to work with. With Linux I have a limited selection of laptops, if I want it to work fully. I'm a developer and I know my way around Linux pretty well, still I usually run into "missing drivers", "package management is broken", "hardware working mostly but not fully" when I try Ubuntu or Debian.
Your options are pretty much just the Dell XPS/Precision line and the Lenovo X1 Extreme series? Anything else?
Though, isn't the issue more that your listed requirements show a strong personal preference to macbooks?
Disclaimer: Content customer
However with Dell XPS Linux version, Lenovo has a couple, and also System76 and things you have now hundreds of laptops guaranteed to work and many more that actually still will. Just research them first if you're not sure. These days there is so much info on laptops that work well.
The first class supported ones like XPS (which I'm on my second) get firmware updates etc. it gets easier and easier every year.
All I'm doing to have perfect Linux support in all my laptops is to go for the boring models. No RGB keyboard, no bleeding-edge dGPU's, and no dual, or foldable screens.
The reason I don't live in that world is because laptop manufacturers, in the general course of things, don't ship their laptops with Linux; they ship them with Windows.
The obvious answer is to buy from manufacturers who ship their laptops with Linux. You could try Dell or System76.
Incidentally, it would be nice to live in a world where I didn't have to check for MacOS compatibility; I could just buy MacOS from Apple and run it on whatever. The answer is very similar: if you want that experience, buy it from the laptop manufacturer that ships their machines with MacOS.
i always have had a debian and a windows laptop. for at least 20 years. 95% of my time is on the debian one.
this year was the first time where i thought a windows laptop might be enough. i am waiting for the next release of the WSL2 and i think i'm jumping ship for good.
My go-to is Lenovo, and sticking to the Thinkpad line. Occasionally I've had some growing pains, but I've found using a model that's at least 12-18 months old is more than sufficient for patches to have made it upstream.
Obviously if you have some specific need for a rather new model, then going for something like the Dell XPS line or some other "Linux Certified" line is a better plan. But for my needs, anything within the last 6 years will likely be good enough in my book. I tend to kick intensive jobs off to my local server or set up a one-off in the cloud.
I have spent 95% of my time in Linux, and only get into Windows for a game or two that I haven't bothered to figure out a Windows VM setup for.
Definitely recommend Linux for those looking for dev machine alternatives to a Mac. There are certain finiticky things when setting up, and it doesn't have the immense MacOS polish, but I would say it's 80-90% of the way there to a good, intuitive dev machine that gives you a very similar experience to a Mac programming setup.
Note, I'm referring to a desktop setup, no idea about how it works with laptop hardware and I have a MBP for my portable needs.
Let me also just say that I am basically at the point where I may soon recommend a pop!_os machine to my parents (who are in their late 60's and have limited abilities on computers). Given that I'll personally be on the hook for any and all tech support, take that as a strong vote of confidence!
When it comes to development I find it immensely better, and found that it has also made me much more confident when I poke around on servers - no context switching between my local environment and remote.
The only thing I miss is Adobe lightroom, but I don't do so much photography these days so it's not a deal breaker
Have you tried Steamplay/proton (https://www.protondb.com/) or Lutris? (https://lutris.net/)
My external monitors periodically stop working due to an NVIDIA driver bug.
Have you had any similar issues?
Zoom is a hot mess and fractional scaling still doesn’t work right.
I just tried disabling the hidpi daemon in hopes my monitor wakes up correctly. We’ll see.
All that said I am addicted to the speed of the OS compared to windows or Mac OS. I feel like I’m using the full power of the laptop.
I’ve not tried plasma but I miss a lot of my Mac shortcuts like super + left or right going to the end of the line. Still don’t have that working.
It’s so much better than it used to be but I would love to see one of the desktops reach the same level of polish as Mac or windows 10.
It resolved itself for me recently in all apps except Slack. I have no idea why. I'm fairly sure I didn't update anything.
While it was still reproducing, I tested a purported fix in the upcoming Chromium 87 (or 88?) and it was resolved. So just wait a bit or try Canary. More specific info in the bug thread of course.
[1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=111304...
[1]: https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/455.38/READ...
The machine is Ryzen5/Vega so it requires no proprietary driver though it isn't Linux certified at all. The only piece of non-working hardware is the fingerprint reader (apparently a driver will come someday...).
I find community support for linux much much better (askubuntu, superuser and numerous blogs rather than official ms forums). Not sure if this is because I am software developer and am used to stackoverflow-like kind of support or windows "community support" is a mess.
I suspect the reason the quality of the community support for Linux is so much better is that the community is smaller, self-selecting, and generally more knowledgeable versus the majority of the Windows community. Up until recently it required a certain commitment to run Linux on the desktop and that still bleeds through.
Normally when I buy a new computer I just get a Macbook Pro but, with Apple seeming a bit off the rails, and working from home making a desktop machine more viable again, I'm thinking about building my own machine. I'm also seriously considering Linux because Windows 10, I'm afraid, drives me to distraction most days (I have to use it for work unfortunately).
[0] The StackExchange sites aren't quite as bad, but the other forums are absolutely grim.
2) Agree, but with popular distributions it is relatively easy to find help. With unpopular ones not so much, but you can always choose more common one. If you need to use some special distro experience can be worse.
3) Sorry, cannot disagree more. For me OS utilities in Ubuntu are dead simple and this works for me quite well. But once upon a time windows 10 decided that for some reason I must have 3 different English laouts (UK, US and Latin or smth like that). I did manage to remove redundant ones by performing some unobvious actions in unobvious settings sections. And extra layouts kept returning after reboots. I had other similarly annoying problems and they were difficult to resolve because solutions posted literally month before had completely different settings layout on screenshots compared to mine. In windows 10 settings do change drastically every few... months?
Command-line-based interfaces seem more stable. And most common issues are already have accessible solutions if you use stable release of popular Linux distro. At least in my experience.
The Microsoft issue was I’d bought a laptop which came with an Office trial, but wanted to enable Office using a license I bought through work. It required uninstalling the trial version, running a power shell command line tool to clean it up, then install the required SKU of Office. The MS rep was also very knowledgeable, logged on remotely with my permission and I watched the whole process. It took a while, but the engineer knew exactly what to do and did a great job.
That was the first time I’d had phone support from Apple or Microsoft. I wasn’t too surprised at Apple, I’ve had great support from the stores before so that extending that to over the phone wasn’t too much of a stretch. I was pleasantly surprised at the speed and quality of the support from Microsoft though, I really couldn’t have asked for more. It’s just brain bindingly ridiculous that getting their software, that’s supposedly already on the blasted machine to actually work took such a torturous set of steps to perform.
I suppose that’s all incidental to the thread, but anyway. The things that annoy me about Linux are the lack of system upgrade options, you basically have to reinstall from scratch every time, and the awkwardness of system backups. I’m spoiled by a Time Machine I suppose, it’s the thing I miss the most on Windows as well.
[EDIT - Looks like I'm missing some options on keeping Linux up to date, thanks for the tips]
You mean migrating data to new hardware? Or do you mean clicking "Yes, please upgrade" (or typing `sudo do-release-upgrade`) doesn't provide enough options?
My main dev machine started as a Thinkpad running Ubuntu 9.04 and has not only been upgraded many times but has migrated its hardware twice and is now an Intel NUC on my desktop. Never reinstalled anything.
I used to reinstall Windows machines regularly because they'd bog down to uselessness or stop working after a few months. Since it's only a games machine I have learned the best maintenance program for Windows is to toss the machine every few years and replace it with brand-new hardware and software and reinstall the games from original media (mostly Steam). Also, never reboot because it will bog down my home internet connection doing a massive set of downloads from all MS and all the driver vendors and resynching all its trackers. Also also keep it isolated in the DMZ because it should be considered asymptomatic but infected at all times.
I'm using Fedora as my main OS (on the laptop since 2011, on the desktop since 2015) and here it's easy to upgrade to the next release, I've been doing it for years (with only 1 full reinstall at some point):
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/dnf-system-u...
[0] https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/deployment/autom...
For me, it’s reasons like that which keep me on Apple: 90% of my basic computer operation/maintenance usecases are already taken care of, or have first party software to take care of it.
I leave finessing linux operations and programs for my day job.
Run a rolling release then like Manjaro or another Arch based system. I’ve been running the latest release of my distro for years, never had to reinstall.
Also, there are plenty of free backup apps for Linux like Deja Dupe or Back-in-time. I don’t really bother with them though because all of my important stuff goes into git, even my dot files.
i have all my program settings files saved in a syncthing folder and the script creates softlinks where those files are supposed to be. dconf let's you backup and restore a ton of settings in one go. the only thing I have to do after the script is done is log into websites and then my computer is fully set up
I strongly doubt Python+GTK is easier option compared to WinForms/WPF. Maybe installing IDE is blocker for you?
But I can't resist using macOS at this point and their hardware.
I'd like to see someone run Linux on the new M1 hardware.
Overall, everything seems to "just work" at least as well as on MacOS and is not quite (for me) as endlessly frustrating as Windows. Gaming has also been effortless and honestly just the most delightful surprise about the whole thing. I can write code AND play games... on the same machine... and it's running Linux?! I would've lost that bet ten years ago.
I was/am totally prepared to use GPU pass-through to a Windows VM to get native gaming performance or work around bugs-- but I haven't needed to.
I'm using PopOS but am pretty indifferent toward the distro I use. I honestly got it confused for different distro, but it was still Debian/Ubuntu based so I'm chill (ha).
Really, most modern Linux distros are pretty god damn nice. It's a little weird to even think about dialing in the aesthetic more to my liking coming from the world of MacOS. But I've found themes like Nord (https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1267246/) provide some visual familiarity while maintaining their own unique aesthetic qualities.
Making apps, or interacting with the OS, is absurdly easy using GTK and Python vs anything Microsoft or Apple have to offer. I have the same effective level of support which is to say none-at-all or via the community of volunteers. I can't ever imagine calling Microsoft or Apple for meaningful help (roflcoptr and we say we pay for support).
Linux is rocking the desktop hard, if you haven't tried it in a few years or just maintain a Windows installation to play games-- seriously give it a try. It's wonderful.