The question was "What is the primary operating system in which you work." (Emphasis mine.) The question itself implies that we should only be able to pick one, and yet the results clearly indicate that more than one was allowed. Most likely, people were listing the OSes they use a lot. A great many of us developers use a commercial OS locally, but also interact with Linux servers or containers on a regular basis.

That said, there's no simple interpretation of that "40% use Linux" number that passes the smell test. It's implausibly high for the number of people who use it as their primary workstation OS, and it's implausibly low for the number of developers who regularly work in Linux. More likely, what this number represents is that different respondents interpreted the question, which appears to have been ambiguously framed, in different and incompatible ways, and so the result is statistically meaningless.

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#technology-mo...

I guess you could use Windows at work and Linux at home (or viseversa).

I'd bet some people also say Linux becayse they have homeservers and other secondary uses besides their primary driver.

If I can find a good MDM solution for Linux hardware and software, I'll let the employees at my startup use Linux too.

I get a sense that corporate MDM is all that's holding Linux back.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/fundamentals/su...

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/user-help/enrol...

You can't even touch fintech unless your engineers work on MDM'd devices.

You can't trust every single employee to always keep their machine up to date or be on the up and up. Statistically speaking, you'll need it eventually.

At best I could run something like osquery that sends reports to my sys-net VM that forwards them to to an interested IT group at a set interval, but no one has actually implemented this as I am always enough of an edge case that they can file a special exception for me.

Some fintech orgs do get by with Linux users just using osquery reporting to a central monitoring panel like Kibana or Kolide that can send automated alerts to those not complying.

Using Linux not making people automagically smarter and setting simple passwords or not enabling disk encryption - that kind of stuff I can easily imagine to happen without external curation.

Linux is just a tool. Yes, just another tool.

I've personally seen multiple, not even single digits of persons, who store they ssh private keys unprotected, not using Full Disk Encryption and so on - most of them even have no idea that booting with `init=/bin/bash` will open their system. Those are average Joe and needs curation.

Industry need to the way to ensure on such things => industry created MDM.

Actually it's finally a sign, someone starts interested in bringing Linux To Desktop. I'm waiting for telemetry to be added - that will assure me of the interest further of Linux as a viable Product, not just concept.

But I think your point is sound. Our totally not monopolistic tech giant friends would never dream of colluding to make mobile device management proprietary. To lose hold of MDM would unravel too much. and iStuff doesn't play nice w/ Linux. If there were a decent way to get Messages and SMS on a desktop Linux OS I would be there today.

This might just be the bias of the circles I move in, but over the last five years me running Linux on the desktop in a development work environment has gone from a weird oddity, to uncommon, to boringly normal. I've had a few non-work tech-adjacent friends ask for opinions on running Linux on Thinkpads for example.

I strongly suspect there's a multitude of factors including the rise of the cloud, the maturation of Linux desktop distros, Linux being the default/only options for things like Raspberry Pi's, developer software being multi-platform, etc.

While some hardware issue still remain, getting Linux compatible hardware of any type is pretty easy. It's not 100% guaranteed situation like Windows is, but you'll have multiple options for whatever you are looking for, which is a massive difference compared to years passed where some hardware categories simply did not have a fully fledge Linux compatible option.

I can get it to work because the terminal doesn't scare me, but there's no way I can recommend it to anyone without a certain amount of technical skills.

I started daily driving linux in the 90s. When I switched to a mac around 2010 if found Mac exhausting. It had different usage patterns than I was used to. Some of my most used features weren't there. Having a reasonably usable shell experience required lots of tweaking and macports then brew. When I switched back to linux ~5 years ago there was a while where getting back into the linux groove was exhausting because I wasn't used to it, but not as exhausting as switching to mac because I already knew it, just needed to get back in practice.

Every time i use windows (which is rarely, once a year maybe) i find it exhausting.

I propose that it's not the OS that's the exhausting part - it's the switching to a new environment with different workflows and thought processes around it that is exhausting. Similar to how it's much harder to get familiar with a codebase in a new (to you) language than in a language you are proficient in - but both cases can be taxing.

Programming languages - you could argue Rust isn't hard to learn, by pretending that everyone claiming it is are just having trouble adjusting from javascript. But that breaks down when you realise the Rust learners finding it hard are actually polyglot programmers who are finding it harder than all the many other languages, in multiple paradigms, they have already successfully learned.

Similar with Linux - I find it harder to 'use' in a certain sense (the sense most people mean - which is getting all the ordinary hardware & software stuff working) than the others. You'll tell me it's unfamiliarity, but it's just not - my first Linux was Slackware on floppies, and I've used it alongside Windows and MacOS now for decades. I choose it for my primary OS for other reasons, but ease of use certainly isn't among them. I still have to fiddle more with it .

The fact the mouse scroll wheel doesn't even work well on Linux is just shameful.

The issue is the scroll speed and amount is inconsistent between applications.

And now with some applications trying to implement smooth scrolling it's even worse.

A. I'm looking at pointer speed section in Mouse Preference in Control Center. It's pretty simple. It give acceleration and sensitivy.

B. Just about every GUI aims for decent defaults and doesn't allow endless customization and such customization generally isn't a beginner task.

I've used the Linux desktop for ten years (Mint then Ubuntu-Mate). Haven't customized anything with a bash script for many years. It is currently clearer how to do things than Windows - it's fricken TWO start menus jumping over each other.

Dismissing people's needs isnt the way to solve this.

Then we can get a better sense of how niche these demands are, and how well these desktop OSes support them

Sandboxing is ridiculously bad on all 3, the best being MacOS. But this is one area where desktop OSs are simply way behind mobile ones.

Seems approximately equally true and arbitrary.

Just because you've used Linux-training wheels edition and don't remember having problems isn't grounds to dismiss the large number of people who do have issues with Linux.

I also find Linux exhausting. I use it daily in servers and containers. It excels from an administrative perspective. I avoid using it as a client desktop pc at all cost because that is not where it excels.

Experience makes it all much easier, simply because you learn which software to avoid. Having this experience, linux for me is stress free and low hassle. But if you don't want to accumulate that experience, if you want to stay on a default track with the right choices made for you already, then you probably should go with your gut and get a Mac.

Anyway, the "year of the linux desktop" is a joke. The very premise is an old meme that nobody should take seriously, nobody can even agree what it should mean. The year linux became viable for desktop use depends on the person doing the considering. For some it was years ago, for others it will be never.

True, there’s two:

1. Complaining about your experience, only to be told that someone else doesn’t have problems because they’re better at it than you.

2. Being the guy who says he’s better.

It is a general and widespread phenomenon though that anyone who has been less than positive towards Linux on HN or anywhere will recognise. I don't think it reflects animosity towards users of mainstream OS's so much as defensiveness, particularly from strongly self-identified Linux advocates. Which is all a bit daft, because it's (a) perfectly obvious that Linux has plenty of problems (how could something as vast as an OS not?), and (b) that doesn't make it any less the clear choice for some classes of user (like myself).

But if somebody does stick with it and gain that experience, it's often possible for them to find a combination of software and settings that earnestly work well for them personally. It's not as though linux users are all masochists, the reason I continue using Linux is because for me, it's lower stress and hassle than anything else. I learned to use it when I was younger and thought that tinkering with such software was fun. That allure wore off years ago and my present self wouldn't have the patience to learn it all over again, but Linux remains the best choice for me given the experience I already have with it.

I do find the Linux community often insufferable though. Also often extremely helpful however. I guess communities also have their tradeoffs.

This is me. I have one SSD each dedicated to Windows and Linux, and I use Linux fairly regularly. However, I still use Windows for most of my work, because Linux's multi-monitor, Wayland, and HiDPI support is still questionable. I used to love to tinker, but now I just want to get my work done.

What would you recommend as a modern-day user-friendly Linux experience? I've been looking for something not too demanding to put on an old X220.

To the average Joe Blow, I don't recommend any Linux distro. I only give recommendations about Linux to people who already want to use Linux for their own reasons; I don't evangelize it to people who are already content with Windows or Macs. For such people, Windows or Macs are a better choice.

Windows + WSL is pretty neat and very close to be the best of two worlds.

The average Joe, friend of mine, doing mostly SEO stuff (so has some basic web background) was able to start using WSL to run his curl tests, running some tools like sitespeed.io in his docker and things of that sort, without leaving his lovely Windows system.

So I'm pretty assured here.

There are others like it as well.

I've been running linux on my desktops/laptops and servers for the past 24 years. I've not run into problems from a desktop/laptop perspective for the last 15 years. Some have, but its rare.

It might also be a Wayland and/or libinput limitation.

I would try Mint with KDE but also try a few other desktops. Maybe you will like them more.

I’m not taking anything away from your experiences though. Just offering another data point.

I do get the appeal of macOS. I use it for work but I honestly find it more frustrating than pleasurable but that’s purely because I don’t always agree with Apples design choices.

…And that is the real problem with macOS for me. If you like their default experience then it’s a much more pleasurable platform to use. But if there’s any significant part of Apples design choices you don’t get alone with, then you’re often shit out of luck. Trying to bend macOS to behave any way outside of Apples vision can be more frustrating than dealing with Linux quirks.

That all said, I am in love with the battery life on the ARM MacBook Pros. I’ve managed to go a full working day without plugging the MBP in. There isn’t any comparative device out there for Linux.

So in the end I find Linux for personal devices and macOS for work is a great compromise for me.

I am a bit of a power user, running large builds, analytics, and other things, so its not surprising to me that I get less than others. I would like to see an all-day battery laptop for people like me, though I suspect it will be a few more years.

Oh, and the original work windows laptop I had (fully corporate controlled) with 32GB RAM and 500GB NVMe barely lasted an hour on battery. And it BSODed frequently.

I'd still prefer a Linux work laptop, but the Mac is at least a poor-mans version of it. Windows, even with WSL2, was horrible.

This is Ubuntu and GNOME both having adopted unfortunate strategies wrt UX in recent years. They seem to be trying to emulate the Apple "we know best, take it or leave it", removing customization and freezing the UI, but without the resources spent on getting it "perfect" for the majority. They may still be fine choices for some users but they closed the door on being the "just use this" generic options.

KDE has supported changing mouse scroll from the UI for some time. Linux Mint (including its Debian edition) with MATE or Cinnamon, or BudgieWM are other fine choices for non-terminal users. Fedora has been picking up as a general all-round desktop distro as Ubuntu has been falling from grace.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-Now-Has-Wayland-S-Speed

If you think that Ubuntu has poor user-friendlyness wait until you try this new "Windows 10" thing everyone seems to be on about.

You have to click through about ten pages of menus just to set up the network, and if you get anything wrong the error message is just along the lines of either "Sorry, that didn't work. Please try again!" or "Error -X8004a119af3c occurred", neither of which are particularly helpful. It doesn't come with a usable shell. It doesn't even come with ssh, or zip, or Python.

You're expected to interact with the entire thing by clicking on page after page after page of little coloured squares that aren't meaningfully labelled. Why is a user interface designed like a 1980s "My First Video Game" project supposed to be good?

2. KDE and Gnome created two different rivaling GUI's. Never merged and split the development community down the middle.

3. There are N different GUI libraries: FLTK, GTK+, QT, wxWidgets, etc.

4. There are 3 different cross platform packaging solutions: Snap, Flatpak, AppImage

5. GPU and Wifi drivers can be a pain to get running sometimes, even if they're prepackaged for you. (Hell, my Nvidia drivers crash my windows laptop all the time).

6. Support for hardware sometimes requires third party libraries (solaar for logitech, etc).

7. Some software only supports Mac/Windows, but Mac won't legally let you install their OS in a VM, (not that it stops some people). If you're a business you're forced to use windows anyway for niche software that won't run with Wine.

8. Battery life on laptops typically is worse than a comparative windows/mac system -- because windows and mac tweak more settings for power and performance.

And MacOS is just too slow. There’s far too many animations and it’s extremely difficult to multitask in a useful way.

It’s like Apple has basically been creating MacOS features based on 2 criteria’s. Either so they look good in a demo, or they’re a replica of an iOS app.

I just checked on my Macbook and I couldn't find any option to change scroll speed. So it's more that on Linux you _can_ create a bash script to do just about anything even when it's not a feature the OS has. Unlike others where it's either a simple UI button or you just can't do it.

It’s under Accessibility.

That said, Windows/MacOS are MUCH more stable. Granted, I didn't use them nearly as much, as I use Linux (mainly Ubuntu and mainly LTS versions), but I basically didn't encounter any hardware-specific bugs at all for the last couple of years. Or some deep ecosystem problem, like all this Pulseaudio bullshit.

Linux is really frustrating, and I'm starting to actually lose hope we'll live to see it becoming, you know, usable.

This is easily the most common reason for updates breaking. RPM and dpkg are both nigh bullet proof, and you can generally count on most distros to keep their own package repo in good order. Dependency resolution between out of sync and uncoordinated package repos is where things start to break down.

The Linux volunteer community needs an attitude shift to start recommending the user friendly method over the complicated methods. You don't need to apt install Chrome, it's in your software store, just like most other programs you probably want. If you go die-hard Linux (Arch, Gentoo, etc.) then perhaps there are too many variations in use to give a clear cross DE answer but on Ubuntu 99% of users are on GNOME with Ubuntu customisations, so you can use the Disks tool instead of dd, the Disk Usage analyser instead of a complicated du grep sort command and the software manager instead of apt for almost every common task.

Linux people are often fond of their command line and so am I, but this way any normal user will quickly shy away from the platform for no good reason. There are also people who have weirdly strict opinions about the "right" way to do things (systemd hate, Wayland hate, vim enthusiasts, bash vs zsh vs fish debates) that ruin the experience for everyone but will leave an especially bad impression for newbies. You'd better know the difference between pacman, apt, dnf, and brew before you go to the Arch forum or expect to be insulted for being such a complete idiot to even consider asking a question.

Windows settings are much more difficult to navigate. The layout / structure has changed a lot between updates. Settings are hidden deep within preferences menus with multiple tabs.

Google for things and you find ad ridden pages with screenshots and pop-ups about clicking here, there, then here.

It's a mess.

The start menu, task bar, context menus and almost every other aspect of the UI got a significant downgrade in the process, which is a pain, but at least the settings were fixed.

Take mouse speed, for example. I remember this being incredibly difficult in OSX: https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/7bg3gg/removing_...

On linux it's just a menu option in a gui, or a single command.

Every platform has plenty of bugs, but I find it is consistently easier to figure out how to change/fix things on Linux than on OSX or Windows. OSX is probably the worst platform as soon as you're doing something Apple didn't anticipate (or, is actively blocking you from doing).

Indeed, I never realized there does not seem to be a Ubuntu system setting for adjusting the mouse wheel sensitivity. Apparently, standard solution requires installing „imwheel“.

Lol. Weird. Then, again, in 15 years using a scroll wheel mouse I never had the need to adjust its sensitivity.

I have a lot more issues with Windows moving stuff. Settings are a mess W7 -> W10 -> W11.

Qubes is still my go-to if I have to deal with malware infested things.

I'm full time (95%) on Fedora KDE (Desktop Ryzen 2000, RX500). I've had some quirks with Veracrypt and an external drive and crashes related to running out of memory (I'm sure DotA2 leaks memory since the performance gets worse over time)

I've checked my desktop for mouse scroll speed and actually don't have that option. I did change my scroll speed in one case which is Firefox (about:config => mousewheel.default.delta_multiplier_y = 85)

Try KDE / Kubuntu, it features the scroll speed control [1]. (Xfce, sadly, does not.)

Also sadly, Mac is increasingly windows-like, with things that tend not to work out of the box (and just unsupported), and software updates bringing some trouble, especially huge updates like a new OS version.

I stick with a Linux desktop where I at least acceptably understand and control every important aspect. I did have a Mac at work for several years, and it was also pretty fiddly in certain aspects.

[1]: https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?t=160416

I regularly revisit Linux for desktop (like every five years) and this time I moved 100% from Windows 11 to Fedora 37 and it's been a delight. It's not only a good desktop OS now: I find it better than Windows. Why?

* Performance: I think it's more responsive, like the file manager. It doesn't have an innate dependency on scanning every single thing for viruses that is hard to disable per design. I think my SSD loves me now.

* Ads integrated in the OS: Well. It doesn't have these.

* Customizability: Even GNOME that is not known for this can adapt to the user much better than Windows 11. Windows 11 is terrible and takes steps backwards in this regard. For example GNOME Tweaks + Dash to Dock and I have a Mac-like dock. It's like the Mac dock but more customizable, and it's easy to customize too. Hell I can even customize FreeType to choose between ClearType style rendering or macOS Quartz-like rendering (respect LCD pixel boundaries vs respect font design - you can only have one).

* Apps: Linux culture is to rely on repositories for apps. Windows isn't. They have winget and Microsoft Store now but it's still an unresolved cultural problem where only a subset of apps are found there, and if they do, they more often than not do system-wide changes anyway. Linux has nice, easy to use, stores like Mac. Linux is also miles ahead with containerized app systems like Flatpak or Snap where UWP support (Windows counterpart) is more than shaky in the big picture, and I'd even say a failure.

* Mouse Scroll Speed: Is set in GNOME settings.

* Software Updates: Have still always worked for the past few months.

* Crashes: None yet! Other than app-specific ones but so far only "silent" stuff that don't really affect me that seems to relate to the file manager and thumbnailing corrupt h.264 videos? (a guess from the logs)

I guess your mileage MAY still vary here but as for me, this is clearly a better and more user friendly OS now than Windows 11. I can't believe I'm saying this. But it just is for me and my hardware + software setup now. I like photography and Darktable is a full-fledged Lightroom competitor too.

I'm not a Linux nut either. I was positively surprised and this is the first time in twenty years I've finally felt fine with moving from Windows.

Games? Yes, at 40+ years of age I still do that, juggling time with family life. I have an Xbox Series X for that, letting me use a tiny Intel NUC as my PC. The Xbox gives me a much more fun experience with gaming than a Mac. Been there. Never again.

* Unless your usage is so light that all your computing can be done on ChromeOS or iOS, but even those are plenty annoying.

This is a totally legitimate gripe. On the other hand, I like to have the key repeat speed set to higher than MacOS lets me in their menu, so I also need to configure this in the terminal, except the only references I can find for it safe random stackoverflow questions and blog posts rather than official documentation, so the units are unclear (I can't remember if it's the delay before repeat or the actual repeat speed, but I remember being surprised about how one of them worked with regard to needing to modify the value in the opposite direction than I expected), and I need to log out and back in to test it, after which I might need to tweak again due to not really understanding the units and maybe overcalibrating, which requires another logout...etc.

MacOS is probably easier if you don't want to stray at all off the prescribed path, but any time I needed to do something even slightly outside the seemingly arbitrary sanctioned happy path, it ends up being either even more annoying to configure than Linux, requiring some app that inevitably wants to me to pay them for what feels like basic functionality to me, or is completely impossible regardless of how much effort or money I'm willing to spend. Given how much I like the setup I've been using for years on Linux and how rarely things break for me compared to MacOS updates due to functionality being provided by third party apps (e.g. my iTerm shortcut for showing/hiding the fullscreen terminal occasionally not working after being required to a major OS update, but working just enough of the time that I suspect I wouldn't be able to find a fix), I won't ever be running anything else on my personal machine unless something drastically changes.

xinput --set-prop "Kingsis Peripherals Evoluent VerticalMouse D" "libinput Scroll Distance Scale" 2 2

aside from

xinput --set-prop "Kingsis Peripherals Evoluent VerticalMouse D" "libinput Accel Speed" -1.0

for cursor speed which already worked. HTH

Edit: Patch by 3rd party, I fixed it up so would apply cleanly to most recent package.

You either have hardware problems, or something screwed up your install; the settings manager for mouse acceleration is available where all other settings are, no scripts or command line editing necessary, just a couple clicks and you're done. Now I'm not exactly a fan of Ubuntu and prefer other distros but software updates do actually work on Ubuntu, and I'm not aware of any problems that could cause random crashes. At least on Debian I lost memory of the last time I had to reset the machine due to a crash. Check your system, it may have software and/or hardware problems elsewhere.

The updates are fine these days unless you add external repositories. Sadly, that's what every forum post and blog article will tell you to do.

Rsndom crashes occur if your hardware has problematic drivers (Nvidia, sometimes Intel) and they're a mixed bag. Laptops are more of a problem than desktops but sometimes you just have bad luck. It can also depend on the kernel your distro chose because sometimes a lot of problems can be fixed by updating to a higher LTS version, but the end user should never even need to know this is an option let alone try it for themselves. Canonical and others also include their own kernel patches sometimes which is a whole lot of fun when it comes to reporting bugs.

Things are getting better in the Linux desktop, but in a slow pace. I had some hope with the PopOs (I don't know what they are doing nowadays).

I definitely don't recommend Linux for people who don't want to use the terminal. Actually I hate it when they do and try to make Linux look like Windows/macOS. If you want the Windows/macOS experience, use Windows/macOS.

It's been an incredibly smooth experience.

That said, the one thing that I still haven't migrated over to fully is Linux on a laptop. I'm macOS on an Apple MacBook Pro 14" (powered by Apple's M1 Pro).

I have to use Windows for work, and I ended up just throwing in the towel this year and switching back to the dark side for the time being because I have to get shit done.

My macOS (Intel MBP) and Windows (Dell laptop) end up with something borked by updates pretty much like clockwork. I suppose I am a poweruser of those systems by nature of being a dev, but something always tends to stop working.

ChromeOS and Android are also Linux and users seem to get along just fine with those too.

I never experience crashes except when I have maxed out my ram doing something dumb.

This (IMO) is precisely why Ubuntu is not a user-friendly distro. Fedora (and especially Silverblue) is much more user-friendly in this regard.

I know it's common to judge Linux in general on the basis of Ubuntu in particular, but I don't think it's a fair assessment.

Then it's a good thing we are on hacker news!!

I think it really depends on what you use at home though. I've run Linux as my primary OS from the beginning (when I got my first laptop at 10y/o.) If you use different technology at work and at home you're probably going to run into this. Something I've done in the past when this gets bad is to find excuses to use the technology at home (even if I think it's inferior to what I would have otherwise chosen.) This tends to resolve the problem even if I don't stick with it.

I’ve invited a a long time Linux user who claimed to never had any problems whatsover to have a look. His verdict was that I should have only one external screen and use the same screen in the different places.

This stuff works with Windows and Mac out of the box.

I finally switched my desktop and laptops 100% to Linux. Some games don't run - fine - plenty of other games do. Ableton runs well in Wine, but Bitwig is native, and yabridge runs VSTs. MuseScore was saved. KDE is pleasant and productive. Blender is amazing. Pipewire is audio done right. Electron, despite its problems, makes Linux a build target of ordinary apps. Flatpak and AppImage enable simple cross-linux-distro app distribution. Critical mass achieved.

No desktop is perfect, but at least for people with a nominal, base level of experience, Linux is the least bad.

Looking to the future, I hope the Desktop Linux experience improves with respect to memory exhaustion, and I hope a Patreon-like platform gains prominence to enable easily donating to keep projects alive; it's currently cumbersome to find all the different places to donate.

With great gratitude to every free software and open source contributor, happy end of 2022!

Turns out Debian+KDE +Wayland is exactly right for me, especially KDE connect. The only pain point has been VR gaming, so I've kept a minimal windows install on a small ssd. Everything else has been smooth sailing and I'm considerably less frustrated by design choices when I can just fix them.

Hear hear! I use Gnome purely because home-manager can configure 99% of it. I had to use Windows a few days ago in order to use Serif products and, beyond looking shit, the lack of the gnomeflow is bloody annoying.

FWIW Elementary sports a pay-what-you-want store.

Linux is unstoppable. The monotonic accumulation of all that open source goodness is like a giant capacitor taking forever to charge. The result takes a while compared to a well funded commercial enterprise, but it slowly morphs into a super desktop that is basically impossible to compete against. Free, super capable, private by design. You cannot beat that with bells and whistles. The "average person" UX red lines will be met at some point.

Make no mistake. Life is not linear. Nothing much happens, it becomes a running joke and then, boom and its not a joke anymore, its the new reality.

A data point: today I was talking with a friend who works in a company making a 3D software. Apparently since last year they lost most of their clients to Blender, which used to be the butt of so many 3D software jokes.

The entire streaming industry uses OBS. Colleagues at work use OBS casually to capture recordings.

Linux user community: Linux has been fine for casual users for years! Give it to your grandma, it's not a problem!

Also Linux user community: Wait, you used an nVidia GPU in your build? What kind of idiot scrub are you?

If there's one thing I've seen that's consistent with Linux users over the last two decades, it's been blaming users for all their Linux-related problems.

> I would suggest that this setting [UI scale] needs to be a global and not a per-output thing. If it was a per-output thing, windows moving between different monitors would probably have problems (text size changes while window size does not?). It is hard to imagine how it would work as a per-output setting, for me at least.

See https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/i... , the original issue and the discussion gives quite some insights in how Linux developers see the world.

That conversation was just maddening to read. One person arguing for the end user’s experience and the other one (apparently winning) tunnel-visioned on “pixel perfect”, “well defined”, “guarantees to developers” and “relevant specifications”. Meanwhile, for the last at least five years, I can turn on my Mac, drag windows from one hidpi display to a low dpi display, and everything just works and window sizes and fonts behave sensibly.

The ability to make tough technical compromises in favor of the average end user, over technical purity and developer comfort, is what distinguishes a polished, finished product from a science project.

For me the choice is simple because a non-free operating would not be acceptable. And no, I am hardcore ideological about it, I use a Linux Kernel with binary blobs and all but the point is having system that serves me and me alone. Telemetry, advertisement, forced updates, not allowing me to do whatever the fuck I want with my system are non-starters.

Beyond the ideological I want to note that while learning curve with Linux is steep there are some aspects that make it worth it:

It is mostly a one time investment: Linux is pretty conservative. Once you get it, you get it and wont really have to learn anything new. Most of the time even the bigger disruptions to the ecosystem are not that relevant to the end user and can always be simply avoided if one chooses to, not just for years but decades or forever.

Compare this to Windows. I used Windows XP heavily and absolutely wouldn't be able to perform basic tasks on an modern Windows system. In comparison, if as Linux user from the Windows XP era were teleported into our times, they would still feel at home on today's Linux and could be perfectly productive in nearly not time.

If you are in tech, you might have to learn Linux anyway: Linux server skills are really important to have. And these skills translate back to the Linux Desktop and vice versa as well.

Also docker performance is vastly better on Linux than on Windows or Mac so that alone makes the Linux the best platform for developers. (Not to mention many tools being only Linux native or having priority Linux support.)

Also people need to stop using Ubuntu. I have been using Linux for ages and find the UI super confusing and wouldn't be able to do anything on it. It's just shit.

Use Linux Mint.

Oh and I am using NVIDIA GPUs just fine on Linux. I had some trouble with freezes and crashes but most of these got fixed in updates.

Maybe we can use Haiku as a daily driver one day but for now there is really no good alternative to Linux.

It's too bad, because W10 has its own annoyances (mostly the forced updates and boot interstitials) but at least it actually worked. While I don't have a problem with proprietary software as a Principe, it is nice to have community driven stuff as a counterpart, which is why I periodically test the waters with Linux. It's just that, every time I run into annoyances and problems that make me give it up.

Anyway, ideology aside, I use all three major desktop OSes regularly: gaming desktop is Windows, work laptop is MacOS, workstation is Linux. Linux has certain niceties for developers, but for non-dev-specific stuff it's the most painful to use overall (although MacOS has a penchant for hiding things from the user which can be very frustrating). I also encounter the most instability with it, I think, though these days all three aren't that bad on that front.

Edit: though I'm thinking about a Steam Deck, and that's a Linux PC I suppose. Valve has been doing great work at making Linux more viable for PC gaming.

New hardware can be a problem, especially on Mint which is a little bit more on the conservative side. It just takes times until drivers are made and improved and finally land in Linux Mint. It's not like Windows where drivers are available on day one.

It doesn't feel that much of a problem for me because I started using Linux back in the days when driver support was big, big issues. Back then you weren't even sure if you could get wifi working. These days it is smooth sailing COMPARED to back then but I can see how it might take adjusting for someone coming from Windows. Yes, you have to shop for hardware with an eye on Linux compatibility in mind.

I mean there are also alternatives not based on Ubuntu (Arch, Debian, Fedora, Alpine, Void, ...)

Being based on Ubuntu is pretty great because is is allows access to the huge package ecosystem. Lot's of commercial software is (sadly) only targeting Ubuntu so you can just use the .deb without problems.

Stock Debian is also a great choice (Ubuntu uses Debian as a base) but a bit harder to set up for beginners. (There is also a Debian based Linux Mint variant.)

There are many good Distributions but strictly for beginner "I don't want to tinker" suggestions, the Debian-based ones are a safe choice, again because of the package ecosystem. (Though something like OpenSuse is also very friendly).

So instead of GL 4.1, AMD opens source does GL 3.3 for older APUs, and good luck trying to get any kind of video decoding acceleration.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2lhwb_OckQ

(tbf to Nvidia tho, their support is improving and with big tech putting a lot of weight behind cloud compute the problem will likely resolve itself)

You're technically correct, and for practical purposes incorrect.

Trying to figure out how being easy enough for your grandma is related at all to nvidia gpus.

    30.8% (11868) Macintosh
    22.7% (8745) iPhone
    21.7% (8356) Windows
    15.7% (6065) Android
    8.5% (3284) Linux (!Android)

Mobile: 59%/41% iPhone/Android split.

Desktop: 50%/36%/14% macOS/Windows/Linux split.

Personally I switched back from macOS to Linux (Pop_OS!) as my primary desktop operating system in 2020.

Most of my colleagues at work picked Linux over a MacBook, and they waste countless hours fixing their various Linux bugs.

You must be lying, I never heard of such stories!

NOTE: My computer came without OS. Assuming HP Dev One or System 76 behave better in this regard. But I'm a sucker for 2-in-1.

I was interested in the framework laptop at some point but it increasingly looked like a Windows-first laptop on which the company is happy about you installing Linux on it.

There are laptops marked 10/10 on iFixit on which Linux works perfectly, I'll pick them until this changes.

Sometimes these difficulties have a silver lining, though, after they force you to learn more about the systems you're using. I thinks it's less of a trial-by-fire than it was even four or five years ago when I switched completely to linux, and only getting easier.

There's also the safety-in-numbers aspect, similar to editor wars, where people adopt the attitude that the more people that use their thing, the better it will be, so they are waging a propaganda campaign for their cause.

That said, I agree with you.

The only thing that macOS did good is a separation between ctrl+C and cmnd+C, so I can interrupt apps in console and copy text without issues.

It's actually funny that you mention issues with Thunderbolt docks and monitors, because I feel like those were some of the most frequent issues I've encountered. This year, I actually swapped my work MacBook Pro for a Linux laptop specifically because my Mac would completely and irrecoverably lock up every time I tried docking it to two 4K monitors. My new Linux laptop has some issues of its own, but nothing that severe, at least.

This is very annoying. Some distributions are able to boot directly from the main partition, without a need for a separate /boot though, even with Btrfs. This is the case for the computer I'm writing this comment with running openSUSE Tumbleweed, I think I had that with Debian or Ubuntu in the past. [a]

> sleep states being faulty (or the machine not working properly after waking from sleep)

> or external monitor resolutions being wrong

Fine on my computers too.

> monitor scaling working properly when you have two monitors with different resolutions?

I gave up temporarily on this. It seems to work well on Wayland but I can't bear the blurry fonts that comes with fractional scaling on Wayland (and this is not just Linux, I think macOS is like this too), and I'm still on X11 the scaling is not very adaptative. HOWEVER KDE is getting proper fractional scaling support just right now [1]:

> “What does this do?” you might ask. It allows the Qt toolkit to turn on its pre-existing fractional scaling support on Wayland that it always had on X11. No more rendering to an integer size and then scaling down! This should result in Qt apps that are scaled to anything other than 100%, 200%, or 300% scale having better performance, less visual blurriness, and lower power usage.

And KDE on Wayland may be usable now, so that might be the thing that makes me switch in the coming months.

[1] https://pointieststick.com/2022/12/16/this-week-in-kde-wayla...

[a] edit: by the way, I just installed Debian on an old x86 tablet that was running Ubuntu (because i386 is not supported anymore, and recent versions of Debian are way better than recent versions of Ubuntu anyway). It had a separate /boot on Ubuntu, I installed Debian in a Btrfs subvolume, its /boot is there so now the separate boot partition is completely useless and I will get rid of it. So I can confirm it works on Debian too.

  Disk /dev/sda: 465.76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
  ...
  Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
  Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
  I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
  Disklabel type: gpt
  ...
  
  Device         Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
  /dev/sda1       2048   1050623   1048576   512M EFI System
  /dev/sda2    1050624 972578815 971528192 463.3G Linux filesystem
  /dev/sda3  972578816 976773134   4194319     2G Linux swap

sda2 is fully encrypted, subvolumes used to be managed by snapper and I installed openSUSE with its installer which does a lot of magic so my mount is a bit of a mess. Grub is able to find its config and boot the OS but takes ages to decrypt so I replaced it with systemd-boot. Here's mount:

  proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
  sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
  devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,size=4096k,nr_inodes=3048348,mode=755,inode64)
  securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
  tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,inode64)
  devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
  tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,size=4883644k,nr_inodes=819200,mode=755,inode64)
  cgroup2 on /sys/fs/cgroup type cgroup2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,nsdelegate,memory_recursiveprot)
  pstore on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
  efivarfs on /sys/firmware/efi/efivars type efivarfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
  bpf on /sys/fs/bpf type bpf (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700)
  /dev/mapper/cr_root on / type btrfs (rw,noatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=266,subvol=/@/.snapshots/1/snapshot)
  systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=28,pgrp=1,timeout=0,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct,pipe_ino=16762)
  debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
  mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
  hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime,pagesize=2M)
  tracefs on /sys/kernel/tracing type tracefs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
  fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
  configfs on /sys/kernel/config type configfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
  ramfs on /run/credentials/systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service type ramfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700)
  ramfs on /run/credentials/systemd-sysctl.service type ramfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700)
  /dev/mapper/cr_root on /.snapshots type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=265,subvol=/@/.snapshots)
  /dev/mapper/cr_root on /boot/grub2/i386-pc type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=264,subvol=/@/boot/grub2/i386-pc)
  /dev/mapper/cr_root on /opt type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=261,subvol=/@/opt)
  /dev/mapper/cr_root on /srv type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=259,subvol=/@/srv)
  /dev/mapper/cr_root on /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=263,subvol=/@/boot/grub2/x86_64-efi)
  /dev/mapper/cr_root on /usr/local type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=258,subvol=/@/usr/local)
  /dev/mapper/cr_root on /root type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=260,subvol=/@/root)
  /dev/mapper/cr_root on /var type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=257,subvol=/@/var)
  /dev/mapper/cr_root on /home type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=281,subvol=/@/home)
  tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,size=12209112k,nr_inodes=1048576,inode64)
  /dev/sda1 on /boot/efi type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro)
  ramfs on /run/credentials/systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service type ramfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700)
  tmpfs on /run/user/1000 type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=2441820k,nr_inodes=610455,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=1000,inode64)
  portal on /run/user/1000/doc type fuse.portal (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000)
  gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000)
  tracefs on /sys/kernel/debug/tracing type tracefs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
  portal on /root/.cache/doc type fuse.portal (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0)
  gvfsd-fuse on /root/.cache/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0)

I might as well delete the 2G swap partition by the way, with 24G of RAM I'm not sure it's that useful.

Was just as wonky when I had the windows laptop that the mac replaced. BSODs were common with it, and its crashed the MacOS machine multiple times.

Linux OTOH, doesn't seem to have a problem with the other dock I have it connected to. Haven't had a crash.

But hey, doesn't fit the "linux sux" narrative, so YMMV.

Who hurt you? Pop!_OS?

Last time, I was using an Intel barebones NUC for a stepmania setup, and ran into major problems with both audio and display resolution. Gave up and went to Windows 10, no major issues there setting it up, though the occasional boot screen interstitial is very annoying.

It uses Modern Standby (aka S0 Low Power Idle).

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...

> if there is no S3, it's the producers fault

Or it's Linux fault for not supporting the S0LP? Sure, there are a lot of problems with the S0LP implementation on Windows, but the idea itself is good - that's what all the phones have utilized for at least previous 10 years. Maybe Linux actually could do it better than Windows, if some effort was put into it?

That Linux should support all the crap in existence is a fair argument, however...

> the idea itself is good - that's what all the phones have utilized for at least previous 10 years

Phones are different from PCs, in the hardware design, but also in the usage pattern. If something makes perfect sense on a phone, it doesn't imply it does it on the PC as well.

I owned in the past two hybrid (Microsoft) laptops, which I carried and used on the way frequently, and still, the idea of a connected standby was evidently nonsensical (even ignoring the horribly broken implementation). If one wants to stay connected, they use a smartphone, and/or a smartwatch. A laptop can't be kept in a pocket and pulled it out in a second; it's also often awkard to use on the way.

There are no measurements around; embarrassingly, a presentation by an Intel engineer¹ has zero data, but has photos of cute animals. It certainly consumes more than S3, but how much, is carefully ignored (I bet considerably more).

The modern standby, and the convergence narrative in general, is pushed by the companies that couldn't set a foot in the mobile market (Intel and Microsoft), and are trying to appear relevant.

I hope it dies, although with M$ behind, it's unlikely that it will. It's tragic that a useless idea clearly invented by business suits, is affecting the hardware landscape so significantly.

Funny you say that. I can't boot into my dual Windows-arch desktop atm. systemd-boot is broken after I tried to set up XBOOTLDR partition, which I only had to do since the default Windows EFI partition didn't have space after an update.

1h20m to backup the 500GB SSD. I had to restore it once already after a botched shrinking of a Windows data partition. There was also a problem where literally nothing would boot - not even a USB. I believe this happened because I accidentally copied my main SSD (with the arch/windows EFI partition at the front) to the 8GB USB drive, and (again, speculating) having two similar drives confused the BIOS enough that nothing would boot, it just kept defaulting to network boot. "(Drive not present)" on the Windows/arch boot options. Sigh...

Anyways, I still need to try adding/removing a timeout for the systemd-boot config. I've already tried hosting everything on a separate, larger EFI partition. When I boot to Linux from the BIOS it just shows me options for Windows 10 and back to boot.

TL;DR Linux is a huge PITA.

Don't forget that MacOS ships with very Limited hardware, too.

Latest kernels seem to fix it. But tbh I felt like a fool handing those things to our freelancers.

Sure, something might be misconfigured but the universe of misconfiguration for a Mac and Linux are substantially different because Linux is a much sharper tool.

Pointing the finger at the user is emblematic of the problems Linux has when people say it isn’t suitable for the desktop (and these days they mean laptop).

Linux empowers from micro controllers to data centers because there are domain experts being paid to keep the whole thing running AND NONE of those use cases are for interactive day to day customer use on a laptop (eg power saving, audio, video playback, video conferencing, etc) b with the exception of steam deck and switch that have a carefully tuned and tightly controlled OS distribution for a carefully chosen hw configuration. Windows is arguably the closest to the problems Linux faces but generally Windows does a much better job providing usable and stable APIs that vendors build against whereas Linux does not always do such a good job (+ vendors care about Windows whereas Linux is generally an afterthought except if it’s relevant to Android).

Sorry no. That’s not actually true. Linux the kernel and thus the distribution definitely knows I have a laptop. In fact, many things auto-configure themselves correctly around this fact.

> Because that's the reality of it, the problem is the user who expect things to work for him while ignoring its dimensional capabilities That's not a linux problem, that's a user problem, it's arrogant and selfish to expect "Linux" to work just for your specific HW and specific usecase and all of the effort should be dedicated to you, just you, for your own sake

Consider which OS then I’ll be choosing for my 70 yold mom who isn’t very tech literate. I disagree that it’s arrogant to expect buying widely available and relatively standardized HW (this is x86 not ARM) and expecting it to work well. That’s par for the course for Windows btw.

> Do like valve did with steam deck and configure your Linux OS for your HW, if you are not ready for that, then use windows or macos

Ummm… so you’re agreeing with the OP and me then? There’s no Linux distribution that provides a smooth out of the box user friendly experience? As a refresher, here’s what OP for this thread said:

> Is there any Linux distribution with MacOS levels of reliability, simplicity, and productivity, … Most of my colleagues at work picked Linux over a MacBook, and they waste countless hours fixing their various Linux bugs.

Within the specific context of this thread and what’s being discussed, is your post providing evidence for or against what’s being requested? I’m relating that my experience is similar. Sure, I’m not expecting a MacBook because that’s generally not feasible for general HW unless you have the dominance of Windows or Android. And the Linux ecosystem honestly has done a fantastic job in the x64 HW support all things considered. I’m fact, none of the issues I’ve had are really the Linux kernel itself so most of the benefit of the SW/HW layer configuration and isn’t even a distribution thing. And given that my laptop is fairly popular and has dedicated pages on Arch, one would think there might be community-supported “here’s default machine configuration that sets it up correctly” option.

There’s also the general weird design choices from KDE and Gnome, trackpad cursors still not working correctly (although much better than before thanks to that guy that’s taken on that task), Flame screenshot tool that still doesn’t work in a multi display setup despite that bug being open forever, Bluetooth audio switching not working quite so well, hibernation not working, laptop not going to hibernation by default on power loss, kwrite not automatically saving and restoring unsaved documents on power loss etc etc. These are all bugs or default behavior selection that doesn’t feel sane and I think it’s fair to say it’s not at the polish level of Windows let alone Mac. Since the vast majority of this isn’t about the HW/SW layer, I’d say comparing against the Mac is also fair game. That’s why I’m agreeing with OP and saying he’s not crazy and that I’m not aware of a distribution that is polished (Manjero comes close but the bugs are mostly upstream). What you’ve written sounds defensive and argumentative which makes it seem like you’re supporting the claim that there is a user friendly distribution that has the polish of Windows or Mac but all you actually seem to have said (and correct me if I’m wrong) is basically that that’s unreasonable to expect. I happen to disagree with that position since it’s actively harmful to trying to have Linux get market share, but that’s also arguing a different thing from what OP said. It’s kind of interesting to see this derailment whenever the comparison to user friendliness / polish of Windows and Max are brought up. I think the truth is that it’s really hard to achieve this in a bazaar model where you’re throwing together arbitrary components and no one is doing regular testing of livability of a distribution from scratch (everyone’s deployed their own workarounds when they hit bugs vs making sure that those workarounds are deployed by default for the users it’s relevant for, or even better fixing the issue when it’s not a problem with Nvidia).

Nintendo Switch doesn't run FreeBSD, although it does use some code from FreeBSD. The Switch OS (Horizon) is a proprietary microkernel-based system that isn't POSIX-flavored at all. I don't think the full lineage/history is publicly documented, but CFW and homebrew toolchain developers have noted strong similarities to the 3DS OS.

However, I don’t want to learn about components of my operating system, that is below my pay grade.

I’m not trying to spread FUD, I’m speaking firsthand on some of the experiences my colleagues have had with their brand new $3000 business Thinkpads running all manner of Linux distributions.

I don’t doubt Linux is the right choice when you are creating a tightly integrated, walled off product like a Nintendo Switch.

It’s like saying it’s bad I don’t know how all the internal components of my car work because I rely on my car to get to work.

As far as I am concerned, my operating system is a black box for interacting with VSCode, Slack, Outlook, Firefox, and use a terminal in a user-friendly way. I don’t care how it works, its components, or how it is constructed. I certainly don’t expect to have to fix it - making the operating system reliable and user-friendly is someone else’s job.

It's not as drastic for programmers, but I, personally, trying to keep that attitude myself and I'm trying to learn systems I'm using to some degree.

Maybe those professionals want to learn tools for their actual job instead of fighting with the platform underneath. Just like artists want to draw, not learn how to fix their graphic tablet's broken driver.

Doesn't sound crazy to expect a software developer to know a thing or two about their system. Not necessarily down to the device tree, of course. But being stuck at "learning to use a terminal is below my pay grade" feels like the other extreme to me.

If you need Windows you use Windows

If you need an OS that is configurable and open, you use Linux

If you don't like to configure your OS, then you don't use Linux

That's not "elitism", that's respecting the work done by countless people to offer a free and configurable OS without strings attached

There is FUD in OP's comment since my original reply to tell people to use what empowers them got downvoted, -3 pts right now

"FUD: Fear, uncertainty and doubt is a propaganda tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics, polling and cults. FUD is generally a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information and a manifestation of the appeal to fear."

But BSD isn't Linux... Both belong to *nix family, but so does macOS

Nintendo Switch doesn't use BSD, it is a microkernel.

2022 is the year I switched back to windows as my development experience with WSL2 + being able to use Zoom and Slack without them crashing or getting random bugs.

Even running Linux GUI apps works well on Windows. Run evince file.pdf from the wsl2 command line and evince opens.

The one thing that doesn't integrate well is linux disk encryption utilities and windows. I wish I could use LUKS/cryptsetup but ended up giving up and using Bitlocker.

Linux excels in invironments where people don't ever lnow they're using Linux. Servers, embedded and highly customized environments. For average users Linux is still too much of a disjointed mess with poor hardware support.

I use multiple Linux distros daily and none of them would pass for a primetime ready desktop environment in any of my personal or professional environments. As much as I hate windows and Macos Linux just isn't up to the job of replacing them on the desktop. Luckily for them that is becoming less and and less relevant outside of the business environment.

In the end Linux is still little more than a random collection of software loosely connected through an administrator centric framework.

I’ve been doing this 20 years.

You can only say next year is the year of the Linux desktop.

No hindsight stuff allowed.

Merry Christmas

this is still just a rumor at this stage as there is no source apart from one guy saying it in a KDE conference. If Valve had indeed shipped more than a million they'd be screaming about it on the rooftops.

They have 20 years of brand history, what are you talking about?

Steam link, steam controllers, steam machines, vr headsets, steam deck

inhome streaming, remote play together, steam workshop, family sharing, mobile apps

The only thing I remember is that it wasn't that easy (or maybe my memory does not serve me well) to "apt update" anything (and that makes sense). I think apt was going somehow through internal servers. All I remember is that "apt-file" wasn't working or was prevented from doing so.

Nonetheless - never had problem with the distro/whatever, and TBH never cared what linux is there - as compiler/everything else got somehow in, and you just carry on your work in Eclipse/CLion/JetBrains/Chrome/Firefox/etc.

Will try Mint / others, but it's a shame the "gateway distro for new users" is in such sorry state.

Mint, popOS, and a few others for people coming from Windows would be the "gateway distro for new users"

gnome 3 is not for new users, back in the day, gnome 2.4 days maybe that was the case

Myself included, and people around me keep using WSL without any slight hint of swapping [back] to Linux Desktop. I even know in person the guy who is on WoA (Windows on Arm) with Surface and WSL - he had enough 5+ years of Gentoo experience.

I've installed WSLg and disabled after ~ 20 minutes - just found nothing to run in GUI mode from Linux. Sure, others may, especially dev guys with JetBrains or whatever IDEs, but I literally couldn't remember anything beyond xeyes and konsole to play around with.

Would be nice to see some stats from Microsoft on WSL auditory/usage.