The Linux Desktop Is Finally Great (Both Ubuntu and Firefox)

I think linux became much better in recent years not at least due to things moving into web. Ofc there is a ton of specialized windows only software still, but it became much less relevant for ordinary people.<p>Just remember all the people struggling with open office (not relevant because of google docs and alike) and video&#x2F;audio codecs (Spotify, Netflix etc). In general the amount of desktop apps needed to be productive has reduced.<p>The desktop is just good enough even though App Store apps are quite terrible in both Ubuntu and fedora in my experience.<p>On the other hand with pipewire we can finally have working Bluetooth headphones and after years of endless shitshow simple things like screen sharing are working again

My short list from a recent Ubuntu install:<p>- KDE crashing so many times in a few hours that I had to switch to GNOME<p>- Steam randomly crashing and refusing to launch games<p>- Kernel seems to want to update every 10 days and somehow the default &#x2F;boot partition isn’t big enough so every time it tries to install something apt breaks and reports that it’s out of space<p>- USB audio has random cracks and pops, this is certainly related to drivers because it gets worse whenever a graphics-intensive application like a game is being run. I spent a few hours googling error messages from dmesg and then gave up and bought an adapter for the 3.5mm jack<p>- Wanted to change a theme but first I had to install GNOME Tweak Tool for no reason<p>- still haven’t figured out how to have a system tray which many apps like Discord, Steam, Spotify, caffeinate need to run<p>- caffeinate doesn’t work, computer still sleeps, no idea why as the same program has worked fine on every computer I’ve used for 10 years<p>- Brave browser doesn’t seem to understand the default KDE theme as the window buttons are broken. Switching to GNOME fixed the problem<p>- Firefox doesn’t respect the system theme so every other app is in Dark Mode and Firefox is bright white<p>- I ran an installer script for a program and it somehow made two menu entries and one doesn’t work so when I search for it in the menu I have to guess which one to click<p>- went to install program A but there’s only a Flatpak available and I don’t want yet another package manager on my computer

I disagree completely.<p>I think the problem with Linux desktop can be perfectly illustrated by how you create a shortcut.<p>On Windows, you right click the desktop, click new -&gt; shortcut. A window appears with a paragraph explaining what you&#x27;re doing and a single field to select the filepath. There&#x27;s a button that reads &quot;next.&quot; You click it to go to the second window, in which another paragraph tells you to pick a name for the shortcut. There&#x27;s only one field, here, too. The next button became a finish button. This whole process just to fill 2 fields: filepath and name.<p>On Linux, you right click on the desktop, click &quot;create launcher,&quot; and this appears <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.stack.imgur.com&#x2F;kFhFO.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.stack.imgur.com&#x2F;kFhFO.png</a>

Ehm... GNU&#x2F;Linux is &quot;great&quot; compared to other OSes because it run on modern hw, offer NixOS&#x2F;Guix System declarative approach because in the 2024 installing a system like 1980 it&#x27;s not a wise choice, and it feature enough software, mostly FLOSS, to do any normally needed tasks.<p>Unfortunately most of the world have failed to evolve, so it&#x27;s still rare to have declarative systems, Emacs&#x2F;EXWM style desktop instead of ridiculous floating windows and icons model and so on.

What&#x27;s still weird for me is Bluetooth audio hardware. After hours of working perfectly it gets choppy or jittery or it sounds like a second layer of hiss where intensity follows the volume of the audio. It&#x27;s either restart the audio stack or the OS. I can&#x27;t find a cause.<p>Also on my last Fedora install on an HP EliteBook some random PC speaker alarm would sound and I couldn&#x27;t for the life of me find the perp.<p>Yes, Apple&#x27;s walled garden is pedantic as hell, but the main UI stuff just works.

I have been using ubuntu as my main OS since 2018. Like anything it takes some time to get used to it. Once you get your particular setup dialed in, it just works.<p>I enjoy the consistency of being in linux for all my work. For anything that ubuntu cannot do - I have a windows VM, and a Mac VM - although I rarely start the mac VM these days.

All the negative experiences here on Linux ignore all the negative experiences other users have on Mac and Windows. &quot;Every OS sucks&quot; is still relevant.

Do people not just use linux by default nowadays? I had to install Windows for AI stuff recently and it was such pain, literally took me the whole day for the &quot;just works&quot; drivers to actually work. That would have never happened on linux. Who puts up with that still, if its not your only alternative to run some specific program? Also Nautiuls (default file manager) sucks so bad, even the windows one is better, other than that Ubuntu is fine. Mint is better &quot;just works distro&quot; thought.

The fonts comment must just be Ubuntu not having an app by default, you just double click a font, gnome-fonts opens, click install.

The default Ubuntu Gnome based desktop offends me. It&#x27;s like the designers thought MacOS was far too confusing and customizable, so they didn&#x27;t expose more options than would confuse a toddler. This wouldn&#x27;t bother me if their design choices hadn&#x27;t been so hostile.<p>It&#x27;s little things. The thing that bothers me every day is the 1px window borders which I fight to be able to grab with my high dpi laser mouse on a perfect tracking surface. 1px borders also means when I place windows side by side I can&#x27;t help but grab the wrong window when adjusting them, so I have to deliberately leave a little gap between them, and the gap width is never perfectly consistent.<p>Yeah it&#x27;s linux, so I could load up any number of alternate desktop environments or tiling WMs, but I&#x27;d much rather mess around with my code than sink time into customizing my GUI. I&#x27;m also hesitant to go nuts customizing my work linux box as there&#x27;s value in having a similar setup to others you&#x27;re working with.

Come back in a few months. The Linux DE is broken beyond repair. If it’s from the big names (KDE, the one with the foot logo, the mouse one, etc) or is dependent on them, it’s not worth even looking into it.