Yeah it used to be quite buggy aout two years ago. But nowadays. I have no issues at all. Well almost none. yeah sure some little hiccup comes up sometimes but overall just runs smoothly. Most probably the improvement also has something to do with my switch to openSUSE Tumbleweed, they really pay a lot of attention to KDE software integration, and it shows.
What I'm constantly wondering is why macOS is so popular, especially with tech people, like developers.
It's the most terrible platform, imho. It's more buggy than Windows, it has the same malware problem as Windows, it's spy- & adware as Windows, it's inflexible, it's completely dumbed down, and it's incompatible to anything (even it former self).
The usability of macOS is even worse than Windows, imho. Still it's very popular.
Why is the brainwashing by Apple's marketing so effective? I don't get it.
Because macOS has been the most consistent in the past 20 years and it works out of the box and has exceptional integration with exceptional hardware. Plus enterprise support. (Being consistent doesn't make it good or bad on its own, just being consistent can be a bonus for some).
A lot of developers are not technical-savy either to deal with linux's hardware issues, dependency issues, etc. Many IT doesn't want to deal with linux for the same reasons.
It's also easier to fix if everyone has the same hardware and software. Many devs use brew/iterm2 for package mgmt and advanced terminal support.
KDE may be the best DE out there but it doesn't matter as long it is not available on typical commercial devices and works out of the box with 100% hardware integration support. Business has an impact on what hardware their employees can use and it is often macOS/Windows because it has the lower overall investment cost and much better integration support with their device management tools.
> It's more buggy than Windows, it has the same malware problem as Windows, it's spy- & adware as Windows, it's inflexible, it's completely dumbed down, and it's incompatible to anything (even it former self).
And Linux has been the most unstable OS for me with broken nvidia drivers, bricked installs and so on all from updating Linux a few times in the past 3 years. We can blame Nvidia for this but it doesn't matter to everyone else, it is still Linux's responsibility to ensure it doesn't happen.
I never had to reinstall MacOS on any of my devices in the past few decades. Windows, I did have to reinstall because of bad Windows updates.
macOS is nowhere as bad as Windows with its spyware/adware, it's there a bit but it's not that big of an issue.
> it's inflexible, it's completely dumbed down, and it's incompatible to anything (even it former self).
That's the best part of macOS and why businesses want it.
KDE itself was hard to use for casual users because it is too flexible and comes with defaults that are not tailored to them. (I said was, because last time I tried it was a year ago and it had some weird defaults).
If KDE could optimize their initial defaults for the incoming new users (which are growing up with iOS/Android devices first), then they might have a better chance.
Stopping breakage on updates is one of the big promises of ostree-based systems (fedora Silverblue and Kionite), and declarative systems (Guix and Nix). Easy rollbacks, updates are installed in the background with no impact on the running system, and atomically switched on reboot.
> Stopping breakage on updates is one of the big promises of ostree-based systems (fedora Silverblue and Kionite), and declarative systems (Guix and Nix). Easy rollbacks, updates are installed in the background with no impact on the running system, and atomically switched on reboot.
That will be wonderful and by then, maybe, Linux may be considered as long as it is all simple to use.
Until then, macOS/Windows/ChomeOS will continue to be the most commonly used PC OSes.
I was happy when my sister switched to using Linux (Mint) but they lasted 6 months before switching to Windows and they said they have no plans to try again because it ain't worth the hassles.
I see breakage on updates only on macOS and Windows. There it is a constant. People usually fear updates on those systems by now. It's always: "Let's wait and hear what others say what breaks, and whether there are workarounds", or "Let's wait for the first few minor updates to the major update; you know…".
OTOH my Debian Testing boxes almost never break even I update them every single day. (You get maybe one issue caused by updated every 2 - 4 years; most of the time you just need to wait a few days to get a fix. If it's urgent a downgrade of the affected package(s) can remedy the issue instantly.)
So in my experience even a perpetual "beta version" of Debian Linux is more stable than "regular releases" of other systems…
I didn't had any not trivially solvable issues with my Linux boxes in the last 15 years. But I read about the major fails of either macOS or Windows more or less on a daily basis in the news… I really don't understand why anybody would use those systems therefore.
Of course YMMV… I don't use any exotic hardware, don't buy the most shiny stuff right away, and I only use Debian Testing—as almost all other distris are imho broken. The ones that aren't are imho on the other hand too complicated to handle (like e.g. NixOS).
> But I read about the major fails of either macOS or Windows more or less on a daily basis in the news… I really don't understand why anybody would use those systems therefore.
When the install base is over two billion of users, we're bound to hear issues. Just bitrot alone can cause some % of issues.
We're not hearing from 99% of the users, only those that have an issue and took the time to say something. There's no reason for the news or even people to go on the web every day to say Windows/macOS/Linux still works fine with updates with no software issues.
I'm not saying OS are immune to issues but there's no evidence that Windows updates is causing billions of devices to break or brick on a constant daily basis here. Yes, some software may break, some incompatibility issues but Windows is pretty decent with its updates. It's also fairly easy to rollback by uninstalling the previous Windows update.
Plus, macOS with Time Machine is an exceptional backup mechanism (Linux with TimeShift is great as well). Windows is...questionable. I use Reflect but I doubt most people know how to back up properly.
However, I can't say that I speak for 99% either, all I can report is from people around me. I work for an employer with over 900 employees and most are on macOS, I can confidently tell you that it is not an issue at all. We rarely have an update issue. Altho, we do inform people to wait a few days before installing an update, mainly to make sure our custom stuff is working fine first.
> So in my experience even a perpetual "beta version" of Debian Linux is more stable than "regular releases" of other systems…
Considering one of the most popular distro is Ubuntu, which itself is based on the Debian Sid branch and a huge number of distro is based on Ubuntu; it's already safe to say that Debian is stable usually across most of its update channel.
Debian is nice but I struggle to get it to work on my laptop with nVidia GPU. Some of its defaults was odd as well.
I can say Debian stable is extremely snappy, it honestly shocked me. I just wish it would work out of the box on my stuff without me spending hours to figure it out. I gave up and switched back to Pop_OS; nvidia and Wi-Fi chips didn't work at all.
Hopefully, that might improve over time as I hear Debian 12 is going to be more flexible with "non-free" binary firmware and drivers for its images/installer.
> I don't use any exotic hardware, don't buy the most shiny stuff right away, and I only use Debian Testing
That's the thing, as long as we do that, it'll be safer and less likely to break. We have to work harder to find the right hardware for the right linux support. Casual users are just going to buy whatever's configured for them.
For me, if I want to get the best Debian experience, I have to find a laptop without nVidia chip, an older Intel or AMD Chipset and hope it works out of the box. Don't get me started on Wi-Fi chipset as well.
And modern macOS has no Nvidia drivers at all. Would Linux be a better OS if they simply removed the choice for the user to use Nvidia if they want like Apple does? I'd argue not and I'd also argue blaming Linux for a third party's support they don't really control is a bit ridiculous.
It has loads of weirdly missing basic features like the ability to adjust the sound of a monitor's speakers when connected by HDMI or DP. Updates are the absolute slowest of any OS regardless of whether it's a whole new version or a security update. And if your SSD kicks the bucket the whole machine is a brick.
Why would it, there is no modern Mac (excluding Mac Pro) with nvidia GPU and soon, not even an AMD GPU once they stop selling all Intel based Macs.
macOS is not an OS you can install on any other hardware. So, how does that apply to the reason why companies and developers are continuing to use macOS in the first place?
If the companies and developers need nVidia support, they wouldn't buy the Macs in the first place, they would've bought the devices and use the OS that supports it.
We're not talking about which OS is better or whatever, we're talking about why there is momentum and why many developers/users are still using macOS despite the obvious better solutions out there like Linux + System76/ThinkPad/XPS/etc.
> Would Linux be a better OS if they simply removed the choice for the user to use Nvidia if they want like Apple does?
They mostly already do (or did). Many distros refuse to let users install the closed-source nvidia's drivers from the installers or included in the image because it's not open source. I'm not disagreeing with them but the fact is that I am only able to use Linux due to Pop_OS that had nvidia drivers built into their image. I even got a few other people to Pop simply because of their hardware using Nvidia GPU. I couldn't use Debian/Fedora 2-3 years ago because of this.
Many distros seem to be opening up to allowing non-free drivers into their image and installers; Fedora is getting better at this. Debian 12 sounds like it is going to open up to this as well.
Users would have an easier time working with Linux if many distros include support for installing nVidia drivers out of the box.
If I bought a ThinkPad with nVidia GPU and Linux didn't even boot on it because the nVidia GPU is too new or there's no open source drivers, I'm still going to say it is Linux and I'm not bothering with it anymore, I'll just install Windows and move on because it just works and does what I want it to do.
> It has loads of weirdly missing basic features like the ability to adjust the sound of a monitor's speakers when connected by HDMI or DP. Updates are the absolute slowest of any OS regardless of whether it's a whole new version or a security update. And if your SSD kicks the bucket the whole machine is a brick.
1. I don't use monitor's speakers, they're horrible but I can understand why that'd piss people off. Definitely agree that macOS should support adjusting the monitor's settings and audio out of the box instead of forcing people to use a third party tool.
2. Meh, all updates are slow. Fedora updates are just as slow if you install updates via their software app instead of dnf, which requires a reboot for any updates. Debian upgrade took just as long on my older laptop, so I'm going to say this is not a con on macOS because it applies to various OSes.
3. SSD has nothing to do with macOS tho, this is a hardware lockdown by Apple, yes it is horrible but it does nothing to slow down or pause companies and developers from continuing to use Macs. This is fairly easy to work around by using Time Machine to back up your data and swap out the logic board at Apple or get a new Mac. Also, Macs don't really break this easily, by the time it may break, companies and developers are already buying the next models.
They still sell the Mac Pro. It costs $6000+ and it's whole raison d'etre is to basically be a box that has PCI-e slots. And a big part of that is GPU upgrades. Isn't that why folks were so excited for the 2019 Mac Pro? You blame some random Libre Linux distro (which is philosophically against you doing what you're doing!) for not booting on a random laptop with an Nvidia card but who do you blame for a Mac Pro not booting with a GeForce card installed? I just think it's an insane unfair double standard.
Yeah, the machine bricking when the SSD is a big problem. Waiting a week for parts or a replacement is ridiculous and you can't even boot off an external backup while you wait. That's awful. Especially if you have any BTO config because a wait is guaranteed.
macOS updates are insanely slow. I have timed several at 40+ minutes even for just a point update. In that amount of time I can completely reinstall Ubuntu and get set back up. I have never had a Linux or Windows update take that long even on slower worse hardware. Maybe I could get one that slow if I paired an ancient Atom processor with a 4200RPM HDD or something, not a relatively recent i7 with a fast SSD.
MacOS used to be better, before the phonification trend.
As a heavy terminal user, one thing I very much like about MacOS is that it doesn't steal ASCII control characters for GUI operations. Fortunately KDE/Qt key bindings are largely configurable, and this is a major reason I use it. (I think I blame CDE for bringing Windows-style key bindings to *nix.)
Finder also has some good things — I miss quicklook and column view. And while I'm picking on Dolphin, its information panel seems hardcoded to focus-follows-mouse even though I don't use that mode.
Around ~15 years ago ios as a platform became a big thing. It's what powers iphone, and you can write apps for it. You can only write those apps on mac hardware. There are hundreds of millions of ios devices in use, all using apps sold to ios users, developed by people running on macs.
> It's more buggy than Windows, it has the same malware problem as Windows, it's spy- & adware as Windows, it's inflexible,
Citations needed please.
Yes, you can get malware on a mac. That's always been a potential, but malware problems on mac have never come anywhere near the scale of malware-on-windows. Not even close.
> The usability of macOS is even worse than Windows, imho. Still it's very popular.
So what we can conclude is that your 'ho' aren't very popular(?). So what?
That can't be it. It must be that hundreds of millions of people are 'brainwashed'.
I got tired of various windows laptops and every linux distro failing to 'sleep' properly when I closed a laptop lid. I got tired of not being able to have 2 apps both play sound at the same time under linux. Oh shit - pulse? jack? alsa? Oh - you chose the wrong version of the wrong distro - recompile your kernel to make that work right - just copy these 87 lines from a linux forum and paste (as root!) in your console and reboot - just be thankful you're not being 'insecure' like Windows.
"But none of those are problems now! You did it wrong! My mate Paul said it's always worked!"
I moved away from daily Linux-as-desktop in... 2008, because I'd spent a good 6 years on various laptops/hardware/etc trying to 'make it work right', and whenever something didn't work, it was always somehow my own fault for lacking some 'easy' piece of info - if I just keep searching/researching/testing - this time it will be better/fixed/good.
I lost a weekend in 2008 trying to get a new laptop set up. Video worked, but could not connect to an external projector. Hours later, eventually connected, but only mirrored, not two separate screens.
This was a days after I'd been assured "oh no... yeah, I know you've mentioned problems before, but these days, it's all just fine - I never have any problems with my linux/laptop!"
I decided ... 6-7 years of chasing/learning/compiling various options was more than enough.
Forgive me if I'm skeptical after many years of hearing "it works great!" and continually hitting walls where no one could ever help. Then... moving to a platform where... you close the lid, it sleeps. You plug in a monitor, it works. Plug in a printer, it works. Plug in a camera, it works. And then... being told somehow that all that end-user experience is somehow subpar to Linux... just doesn't ring true.
I do daily use Linux servers. And I've been tempted to give desktop linux another spin 15 years later. I have family running daily Linux/desktop/laptop - it's mostly working for them, but I still hear about weird issues I've not had to face in years.
If/when I find myself with a lot of free time, I might give it another spin, but... I'm in no rush.
I also agree with this. Have to use all three OSes and Apple is a disaster. KDE Plasma on Linux is years ahead and only getting better, while the closed source OSes are just getting worse. Really too bad that KDE and Linux communities don't have the same marketing powers.
On Pop OS, my middle age eyes also liked to enable the Gnome option "Large Text" in the Accessibility settings. I haven't found the equivalent on KDE yet. But it still looks great and super crisp, just a little bit small.
LTS means they take packages form Unstable and release them on day X no matter the actual state, and than you don't get any updates or fixes for the next 2 years… That's how LTS "works".
I'm using KDE on Debian Testing. Since many years now. It's the most stable and bug free desktop by a large margin compared to any other Linux desktop or the two mayor commercial offerings.
Just don't use any Ubuntu or derivative. They deliver always broken KDE packages. That's a know issues since at least a decade.
By "workspaces" do you mean what KDE calls "Virtual Desktops"? AFAICT, no, they don't seem to be changeable per-monitor. Additionally, when I was poking around in the System Settings to see whether there was some option for that, I enabled "Show animation when switching" -- and then half of my monitor froze!!! :-D
If I would need to guess I would say you've added the global menu widget to the taskbar. That would hide the "regular" menu bar in the applications. Removing the global menu widget should bring back the "regular" menu in the application windows.
OTOH, who really needs a menu bar? You can have nowadays a "command palette" like app menu in KRunner. Much better usability than remembering or searching a menu structure imho—in case you don't need the discoverability of a menu, of course.
It doesn't matter if it is "opt-in". The problem starts with "built-in". KDE and Qt is very huge and highly complex software. Telemetry can be enabled or disabled without my knowledge, one update away. The same is true for your policy which makes it worthless.
Depends on what you mean by "stability." The number of crashes is down but UI churn seems like it's at an all time high.
Settings reversion is a constant peeve. Seriously, how many times to I have to set the height of the task manager. I have one screen that runs at the same native resolution it's always ran at. Tell me how hard it is to preserve the fucking setting? That's just the most recent annoyance but it's constant things like that where an update reverts a setting or two. No, it's not a distro thing. No, my package manager is not walking all the /home/*/.config trees--I checked.
Less annoying is the constant "how to turn off new intrusive feature" quests that occasionally you have to do. Setting something once and forgetting about it is tolerable. It's having to do it more than once that sets me off.
File indexing, a feature that I never asked for, seems finally under control. It's finally not sending me looking for the off button. Although, the number of times I've had to turn it off again after a new release? I really wish there was more respect for my preferences. Why is it on again??????? Good job fixing it but, jesus christ, why is it on again?
I'd like to not have to constantly set my audio output back to "Analog Surround 5.1 Output", turn the Mic off, and then turn the subwoofer back down. But this is Linux. If the last 20+ years have taught me anything it's that audio will always suck on Linux. Always. Forever. When someone replaces pipewire, in a few years, it will still suck. (BTW, bluetooth touches audio... connect the dots.)
But crashes? For me, they seem rare now. Fantastic job there.
But honestly, I'm not sure those are valid points.
KWin remembers windows settings. If it doesn't for you, you maybe used a switch that disables that (even I would not know where this switch could be). If you have some apps that try hard to use their own placing policy (which KDE apps don't do), there is always the override in the window rules right there to be turned on…
Configured settings never change randomly on updates. It may be that new defaults are set, and in case you've never touched the affected setting it will use its new default thereafter. But once you set something by hand, it will stay so. Forever.
Audio just works. Since many years now. At least if you don't touch it to hard… It of course automatically remembers settings OOTB. I have a setup with Bluetooth speakers, build in audio, and headphones, internal and external mic, and I had never issues since years. Powering the Bluetooth speakers on or off automatically switched profiles, and also always restores the profiles flawlessly. It's still PA, as I'm not going to switch until Debian does so by default. (That's actually always a very good strategy regarding any new shiny things in Linux! It will save you a lot of trouble.)
All the described broken things sound like "a distri thing", to be honest. If it's a Ubuntu derivative I would not even wonder…
I would say that it’s not everybody’s jam, though. I’ve tried using it several times and something about its general UI/UX and design philosophy feels odd/grating to me, and no amount of twiddling with its numerous knobs fixes it. A lot of non-KDE Qt software also shares this problem.
DISCOVERABLE configurability. Things I can find in the UI. I hate the universal "add this line to <obscure config file> to fix that" thing that's prevalent in Linux.
Having a gui for settings helps with not having to memorize in what forsaken directory an application keeps its config files, because apparently that's not standard. Is it in .config? Or maybe .<app name>? Maybe /etc/thing?
This sounds like a great use case for VR workspace. Is that a thing yet ?
I haven't touched anything VR related since original Oculus - how far away are we from buying a 1000$ headset and it replacing all my monitors (and ideally I can travel with it) ?
Anyone here using such a setup ? What gear would you recommend ?
It still has Extended Window Manager Hints, presumably because it's a standard that applications can adhere to to get some semblance of coherency across applications and environments. It would be interesting if a modern standard could be created, but let's be real: unless a competing standard gets pushed by Red Hat it won't take off.
Yeah, this is why I had to go write my own WM to have sensible multi-monitor support. I had to break one particular part of EWMH to do it. And indeed, some apps (like pagers) don't work with my WM because of that.
Do I understand you correctly, you use a mix of 4-5 4k and 8k monitors for just writing code? I mean I like a 2 monitor setup for coding but I don't know what I'd do with 4 monitors.
Also if you're happy with defaults a hyprland setup should not take you longer than 15min (sway probably longer), but both are quite a different way of working, so would take getting used to.
One thing i regard as a big lost opportunity is why wayland doesn't allow one to simply specify a desired DPI and it scales all monitors accordingly. As it is now one still has still tweak scaling factors to get two different size/resolution monitors to display windows exactly the same size. All the information is there why can't this be done? Am I misunderstanding something?
Great to hear that multi DPI setups work seamlessly on KDE Plasma. Actually that capability is what brought me to wayland 4 years ago. I switched from i3 to sway, using wdisplays and kanshi to control multi monitor setups... and it was glorious even then.
In 20+ years on Linux I've never been able to make my variety of environments "just work“ this seamlessly on X. It's one of my favorite things about Wayland.
Now that screensharing "just works" I've run out of complaints about wayland, though. Just that it's turned me into an insufferable snob about the blurriness and incompatibility of the X apps I still have to use in xwayland.
But then, I stopped buying NVIDIA more than a decade ago, and linux compatibility is a priority for me in my device selection. So I'm sure there are plenty of other users out there with a less rosy experience than mine.
44 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 92.9 ms ] threadWhat I'm constantly wondering is why macOS is so popular, especially with tech people, like developers.
It's the most terrible platform, imho. It's more buggy than Windows, it has the same malware problem as Windows, it's spy- & adware as Windows, it's inflexible, it's completely dumbed down, and it's incompatible to anything (even it former self).
The usability of macOS is even worse than Windows, imho. Still it's very popular.
Why is the brainwashing by Apple's marketing so effective? I don't get it.
A lot of developers are not technical-savy either to deal with linux's hardware issues, dependency issues, etc. Many IT doesn't want to deal with linux for the same reasons.
It's also easier to fix if everyone has the same hardware and software. Many devs use brew/iterm2 for package mgmt and advanced terminal support.
KDE may be the best DE out there but it doesn't matter as long it is not available on typical commercial devices and works out of the box with 100% hardware integration support. Business has an impact on what hardware their employees can use and it is often macOS/Windows because it has the lower overall investment cost and much better integration support with their device management tools.
> It's more buggy than Windows, it has the same malware problem as Windows, it's spy- & adware as Windows, it's inflexible, it's completely dumbed down, and it's incompatible to anything (even it former self).
And Linux has been the most unstable OS for me with broken nvidia drivers, bricked installs and so on all from updating Linux a few times in the past 3 years. We can blame Nvidia for this but it doesn't matter to everyone else, it is still Linux's responsibility to ensure it doesn't happen.
I never had to reinstall MacOS on any of my devices in the past few decades. Windows, I did have to reinstall because of bad Windows updates.
macOS is nowhere as bad as Windows with its spyware/adware, it's there a bit but it's not that big of an issue.
> it's inflexible, it's completely dumbed down, and it's incompatible to anything (even it former self).
That's the best part of macOS and why businesses want it.
KDE itself was hard to use for casual users because it is too flexible and comes with defaults that are not tailored to them. (I said was, because last time I tried it was a year ago and it had some weird defaults).
If KDE could optimize their initial defaults for the incoming new users (which are growing up with iOS/Android devices first), then they might have a better chance.
Stopping breakage on updates is one of the big promises of ostree-based systems (fedora Silverblue and Kionite), and declarative systems (Guix and Nix). Easy rollbacks, updates are installed in the background with no impact on the running system, and atomically switched on reboot.
That will be wonderful and by then, maybe, Linux may be considered as long as it is all simple to use.
Until then, macOS/Windows/ChomeOS will continue to be the most commonly used PC OSes.
I was happy when my sister switched to using Linux (Mint) but they lasted 6 months before switching to Windows and they said they have no plans to try again because it ain't worth the hassles.
OTOH my Debian Testing boxes almost never break even I update them every single day. (You get maybe one issue caused by updated every 2 - 4 years; most of the time you just need to wait a few days to get a fix. If it's urgent a downgrade of the affected package(s) can remedy the issue instantly.)
So in my experience even a perpetual "beta version" of Debian Linux is more stable than "regular releases" of other systems…
I didn't had any not trivially solvable issues with my Linux boxes in the last 15 years. But I read about the major fails of either macOS or Windows more or less on a daily basis in the news… I really don't understand why anybody would use those systems therefore.
Of course YMMV… I don't use any exotic hardware, don't buy the most shiny stuff right away, and I only use Debian Testing—as almost all other distris are imho broken. The ones that aren't are imho on the other hand too complicated to handle (like e.g. NixOS).
When the install base is over two billion of users, we're bound to hear issues. Just bitrot alone can cause some % of issues.
We're not hearing from 99% of the users, only those that have an issue and took the time to say something. There's no reason for the news or even people to go on the web every day to say Windows/macOS/Linux still works fine with updates with no software issues.
I'm not saying OS are immune to issues but there's no evidence that Windows updates is causing billions of devices to break or brick on a constant daily basis here. Yes, some software may break, some incompatibility issues but Windows is pretty decent with its updates. It's also fairly easy to rollback by uninstalling the previous Windows update.
Plus, macOS with Time Machine is an exceptional backup mechanism (Linux with TimeShift is great as well). Windows is...questionable. I use Reflect but I doubt most people know how to back up properly.
However, I can't say that I speak for 99% either, all I can report is from people around me. I work for an employer with over 900 employees and most are on macOS, I can confidently tell you that it is not an issue at all. We rarely have an update issue. Altho, we do inform people to wait a few days before installing an update, mainly to make sure our custom stuff is working fine first.
> So in my experience even a perpetual "beta version" of Debian Linux is more stable than "regular releases" of other systems…
Considering one of the most popular distro is Ubuntu, which itself is based on the Debian Sid branch and a huge number of distro is based on Ubuntu; it's already safe to say that Debian is stable usually across most of its update channel.
Debian is nice but I struggle to get it to work on my laptop with nVidia GPU. Some of its defaults was odd as well.
I can say Debian stable is extremely snappy, it honestly shocked me. I just wish it would work out of the box on my stuff without me spending hours to figure it out. I gave up and switched back to Pop_OS; nvidia and Wi-Fi chips didn't work at all.
Hopefully, that might improve over time as I hear Debian 12 is going to be more flexible with "non-free" binary firmware and drivers for its images/installer.
> I don't use any exotic hardware, don't buy the most shiny stuff right away, and I only use Debian Testing
That's the thing, as long as we do that, it'll be safer and less likely to break. We have to work harder to find the right hardware for the right linux support. Casual users are just going to buy whatever's configured for them.
For me, if I want to get the best Debian experience, I have to find a laptop without nVidia chip, an older Intel or AMD Chipset and hope it works out of the box. Don't get me started on Wi-Fi chipset as well.
It has loads of weirdly missing basic features like the ability to adjust the sound of a monitor's speakers when connected by HDMI or DP. Updates are the absolute slowest of any OS regardless of whether it's a whole new version or a security update. And if your SSD kicks the bucket the whole machine is a brick.
Why would it, there is no modern Mac (excluding Mac Pro) with nvidia GPU and soon, not even an AMD GPU once they stop selling all Intel based Macs.
macOS is not an OS you can install on any other hardware. So, how does that apply to the reason why companies and developers are continuing to use macOS in the first place?
If the companies and developers need nVidia support, they wouldn't buy the Macs in the first place, they would've bought the devices and use the OS that supports it.
We're not talking about which OS is better or whatever, we're talking about why there is momentum and why many developers/users are still using macOS despite the obvious better solutions out there like Linux + System76/ThinkPad/XPS/etc.
> Would Linux be a better OS if they simply removed the choice for the user to use Nvidia if they want like Apple does?
They mostly already do (or did). Many distros refuse to let users install the closed-source nvidia's drivers from the installers or included in the image because it's not open source. I'm not disagreeing with them but the fact is that I am only able to use Linux due to Pop_OS that had nvidia drivers built into their image. I even got a few other people to Pop simply because of their hardware using Nvidia GPU. I couldn't use Debian/Fedora 2-3 years ago because of this.
Many distros seem to be opening up to allowing non-free drivers into their image and installers; Fedora is getting better at this. Debian 12 sounds like it is going to open up to this as well.
Users would have an easier time working with Linux if many distros include support for installing nVidia drivers out of the box.
If I bought a ThinkPad with nVidia GPU and Linux didn't even boot on it because the nVidia GPU is too new or there's no open source drivers, I'm still going to say it is Linux and I'm not bothering with it anymore, I'll just install Windows and move on because it just works and does what I want it to do.
> It has loads of weirdly missing basic features like the ability to adjust the sound of a monitor's speakers when connected by HDMI or DP. Updates are the absolute slowest of any OS regardless of whether it's a whole new version or a security update. And if your SSD kicks the bucket the whole machine is a brick.
1. I don't use monitor's speakers, they're horrible but I can understand why that'd piss people off. Definitely agree that macOS should support adjusting the monitor's settings and audio out of the box instead of forcing people to use a third party tool. 2. Meh, all updates are slow. Fedora updates are just as slow if you install updates via their software app instead of dnf, which requires a reboot for any updates. Debian upgrade took just as long on my older laptop, so I'm going to say this is not a con on macOS because it applies to various OSes. 3. SSD has nothing to do with macOS tho, this is a hardware lockdown by Apple, yes it is horrible but it does nothing to slow down or pause companies and developers from continuing to use Macs. This is fairly easy to work around by using Time Machine to back up your data and swap out the logic board at Apple or get a new Mac. Also, Macs don't really break this easily, by the time it may break, companies and developers are already buying the next models.
Yeah, the machine bricking when the SSD is a big problem. Waiting a week for parts or a replacement is ridiculous and you can't even boot off an external backup while you wait. That's awful. Especially if you have any BTO config because a wait is guaranteed.
macOS updates are insanely slow. I have timed several at 40+ minutes even for just a point update. In that amount of time I can completely reinstall Ubuntu and get set back up. I have never had a Linux or Windows update take that long even on slower worse hardware. Maybe I could get one that slow if I paired an ancient Atom processor with a 4200RPM HDD or something, not a relatively recent i7 with a fast SSD.
Thankfully, no. It's only going to include non-free firmware by default.
As a heavy terminal user, one thing I very much like about MacOS is that it doesn't steal ASCII control characters for GUI operations. Fortunately KDE/Qt key bindings are largely configurable, and this is a major reason I use it. (I think I blame CDE for bringing Windows-style key bindings to *nix.)
Finder also has some good things — I miss quicklook and column view. And while I'm picking on Dolphin, its information panel seems hardcoded to focus-follows-mouse even though I don't use that mode.
> It's more buggy than Windows, it has the same malware problem as Windows, it's spy- & adware as Windows, it's inflexible,
Citations needed please.
Yes, you can get malware on a mac. That's always been a potential, but malware problems on mac have never come anywhere near the scale of malware-on-windows. Not even close.
> The usability of macOS is even worse than Windows, imho. Still it's very popular.
So what we can conclude is that your 'ho' aren't very popular(?). So what?
That can't be it. It must be that hundreds of millions of people are 'brainwashed'.
I got tired of various windows laptops and every linux distro failing to 'sleep' properly when I closed a laptop lid. I got tired of not being able to have 2 apps both play sound at the same time under linux. Oh shit - pulse? jack? alsa? Oh - you chose the wrong version of the wrong distro - recompile your kernel to make that work right - just copy these 87 lines from a linux forum and paste (as root!) in your console and reboot - just be thankful you're not being 'insecure' like Windows.
"But none of those are problems now! You did it wrong! My mate Paul said it's always worked!"
I moved away from daily Linux-as-desktop in... 2008, because I'd spent a good 6 years on various laptops/hardware/etc trying to 'make it work right', and whenever something didn't work, it was always somehow my own fault for lacking some 'easy' piece of info - if I just keep searching/researching/testing - this time it will be better/fixed/good.
I lost a weekend in 2008 trying to get a new laptop set up. Video worked, but could not connect to an external projector. Hours later, eventually connected, but only mirrored, not two separate screens.
This was a days after I'd been assured "oh no... yeah, I know you've mentioned problems before, but these days, it's all just fine - I never have any problems with my linux/laptop!"
I decided ... 6-7 years of chasing/learning/compiling various options was more than enough.
Forgive me if I'm skeptical after many years of hearing "it works great!" and continually hitting walls where no one could ever help. Then... moving to a platform where... you close the lid, it sleeps. You plug in a monitor, it works. Plug in a printer, it works. Plug in a camera, it works. And then... being told somehow that all that end-user experience is somehow subpar to Linux... just doesn't ring true.
I do daily use Linux servers. And I've been tempted to give desktop linux another spin 15 years later. I have family running daily Linux/desktop/laptop - it's mostly working for them, but I still hear about weird issues I've not had to face in years.
If/when I find myself with a lot of free time, I might give it another spin, but... I'm in no rush.
On Pop OS, my middle age eyes also liked to enable the Gnome option "Large Text" in the Accessibility settings. I haven't found the equivalent on KDE yet. But it still looks great and super crisp, just a little bit small.
That's the root of all your issues.
LTS means they take packages form Unstable and release them on day X no matter the actual state, and than you don't get any updates or fixes for the next 2 years… That's how LTS "works".
I'm using KDE on Debian Testing. Since many years now. It's the most stable and bug free desktop by a large margin compared to any other Linux desktop or the two mayor commercial offerings.
Just don't use any Ubuntu or derivative. They deliver always broken KDE packages. That's a know issues since at least a decade.
KDE Neon (their own self-released hallmark distro) is based on Ubuntu..
Neon is nice to try out bleeding edge stuff right form development. But it's buggy and unstable. Even more than the regular Ubuntu stuff.
So "less jank" is relative, ha ha...
OTOH, who really needs a menu bar? You can have nowadays a "command palette" like app menu in KRunner. Much better usability than remembering or searching a menu structure imho—in case you don't need the discoverability of a menu, of course.
And I didn't realise KRunner could do everything in the app menus. I'll definitely look into that.
Cheers
Software is easy enough to patch. If it wasn't built-in, it'd be easy enough to add. It'd also be one update away.
Settings reversion is a constant peeve. Seriously, how many times to I have to set the height of the task manager. I have one screen that runs at the same native resolution it's always ran at. Tell me how hard it is to preserve the fucking setting? That's just the most recent annoyance but it's constant things like that where an update reverts a setting or two. No, it's not a distro thing. No, my package manager is not walking all the /home/*/.config trees--I checked.
Less annoying is the constant "how to turn off new intrusive feature" quests that occasionally you have to do. Setting something once and forgetting about it is tolerable. It's having to do it more than once that sets me off.
File indexing, a feature that I never asked for, seems finally under control. It's finally not sending me looking for the off button. Although, the number of times I've had to turn it off again after a new release? I really wish there was more respect for my preferences. Why is it on again??????? Good job fixing it but, jesus christ, why is it on again?
I'd like to not have to constantly set my audio output back to "Analog Surround 5.1 Output", turn the Mic off, and then turn the subwoofer back down. But this is Linux. If the last 20+ years have taught me anything it's that audio will always suck on Linux. Always. Forever. When someone replaces pipewire, in a few years, it will still suck. (BTW, bluetooth touches audio... connect the dots.)
But crashes? For me, they seem rare now. Fantastic job there.
But honestly, I'm not sure those are valid points.
KWin remembers windows settings. If it doesn't for you, you maybe used a switch that disables that (even I would not know where this switch could be). If you have some apps that try hard to use their own placing policy (which KDE apps don't do), there is always the override in the window rules right there to be turned on…
Configured settings never change randomly on updates. It may be that new defaults are set, and in case you've never touched the affected setting it will use its new default thereafter. But once you set something by hand, it will stay so. Forever.
Audio just works. Since many years now. At least if you don't touch it to hard… It of course automatically remembers settings OOTB. I have a setup with Bluetooth speakers, build in audio, and headphones, internal and external mic, and I had never issues since years. Powering the Bluetooth speakers on or off automatically switched profiles, and also always restores the profiles flawlessly. It's still PA, as I'm not going to switch until Debian does so by default. (That's actually always a very good strategy regarding any new shiny things in Linux! It will save you a lot of trouble.)
All the described broken things sound like "a distri thing", to be honest. If it's a Ubuntu derivative I would not even wonder…
Having a gui for settings helps with not having to memorize in what forsaken directory an application keeps its config files, because apparently that's not standard. Is it in .config? Or maybe .<app name>? Maybe /etc/thing?
I ended up writing my own WM instead: https://github.com/BurntSushi/wingo
I haven't touched anything VR related since original Oculus - how far away are we from buying a 1000$ headset and it replacing all my monitors (and ideally I can travel with it) ?
Anyone here using such a setup ? What gear would you recommend ?
Also if you're happy with defaults a hyprland setup should not take you longer than 15min (sway probably longer), but both are quite a different way of working, so would take getting used to.
One thing i regard as a big lost opportunity is why wayland doesn't allow one to simply specify a desired DPI and it scales all monitors accordingly. As it is now one still has still tweak scaling factors to get two different size/resolution monitors to display windows exactly the same size. All the information is there why can't this be done? Am I misunderstanding something?
In 20+ years on Linux I've never been able to make my variety of environments "just work“ this seamlessly on X. It's one of my favorite things about Wayland.
Now that screensharing "just works" I've run out of complaints about wayland, though. Just that it's turned me into an insufferable snob about the blurriness and incompatibility of the X apps I still have to use in xwayland.
But then, I stopped buying NVIDIA more than a decade ago, and linux compatibility is a priority for me in my device selection. So I'm sure there are plenty of other users out there with a less rosy experience than mine.