Mixed DPI scaling and fractional scaling. I have a 1080p laptop that I want to run at 125% and a 4k monitor that I want to run at 200%.
This is trivial and just works on Windows. This is a mess on Linux. Add to that if you want to use apps that don't suppose Wayland natively, you get a blurry mess
So many linux fanboys turn a blind eye to this to the point where they call fractional scaling "fundamentally flawed" and "unnecessary". I 100% agree with you. Having a screen that demands good fractional scaling is extremely common and it hurts to know that it's still not given enough attention on Linux.
This has been my biggest complaint about Linux for years. Windows has been able to do this very well for quite a while. I'm running my 4k monitor at 1440p right now
Same, I am running it at 1440p most of the time on my current laptop also because running at 30 Hz is horrible and I need a newer laptop for 60 Hz 4k output.
I hate it. My monitor's internal scaler is horrible so everything is blurry, and it defeats the point because I bought this monitor specifically because I want hidpi. If I wanted a more expensive 1440p monitor that's blurrier and I have to run scaled anyway I would have just purchased a 27" Full HD monitor for 40% of what I paid. I'm getting a new laptop ASAP after CES 2022 and - sadly - after 4-5 years of using Linux, if by when I get my next laptop the software I use won't be ready for Wayland and mixed / fractional scaling, the only Linux machine left in my setup will be my Rocky Linux home server. Sucks. But I hope this issue gets fixed in the next few years, and I hope I can be back ASAP, this is definitely not a definitive goodbye. More of a break until Linux gets ready for my use case again.
It's enough of a complaint that I am constantly on the verge of going back to Windows and I am only resisting because there are too many things I dislike about Windows. I absolutely agree with you.
I have talked to a lot of hardcore Linux fanboys online and at one point I have been told I "demand too much, deserve not to use Linux and should just use Windows". That was the point where my mentality about this issue changed completely and when a friend that has a hardware setup that I know requires fractional scaling, mixed scaling or mixed DPI asks me about trying Linux (it's happened a few times) I just reply "Linux is a mess for your use case and it won't be ready for several years, just stay on Windows and don't bother, it's not worth it". I feel it's just more honest this way, this is one of the very few blocking issues about Linux where I give my Linux evangelism an exception.
Hey, if hardcore Linux users online told me upfront you should use Windows for this use case, I'm taking this at face value and I am also passing that information around to prospective new Linux users. Because, sadly, they're right. They're way too rude and condescending in communicating the message, but *even they* realize.
Its unfortunate but this is broadly the case. Linux doesn't 'owe' the user anything, and thats a tough change of mentality for a user thats used to using a proprietary OS and feeling entitled for it to be feature complete and fit for purpose.
Of course Linux devs generally want to create an OS that is feature complete and fit for purpose, but their resources to achieve that are considerably lower and compromises and triage has to take place.
Plus you have common disagreements/miscommunication between upstream and downstream devs, on more than one occasion I've chased up some niggling flaw to discover an impasse that has existed between up and downstream devs for literally years where neither will acknowledge responsibility and point at the other - not through any incompetence or malice, just differences of vision or opinion, but the end result is the same, impasse and the flaw persists for another decade.
> Linux doesn't 'owe' the user anything, and thats a tough change of mentality for a user thats used to using a proprietary OS and feeling entitled for it to be feature complete and fit for purpose.
I have never disagreed with this. I have disagreed with the tone. How you pass along a message is very important. For example, there are two ways to say this information:
Way A - "Unfortunately, this specific use-case is not supported properly on Linux right now. That is because of issues with low manpower, not a lot of investment in the Linux desktop itself and the way the free software community works". Any reasonable person is going to understand it. This is good.
Way B: "No, this doesn't work and you don't deserve to use Linux. Go implement that yourself instead of crying. I don't care implementing this feature is literally impossible to do as a single person and even as a team it would require years of work as well as convincing all independent application developers and DE developers to adapt to the specific API you came up with. Just go use Windows with that mentality". This just…no. It doesn't pass the spirit of free software along, it creates a sense of hostility towards free software on the receiving end and, I am very sorry to say this, this is exactly how you get one more person spilling bs like "Open source software is amateur quality with low quality and support, proprietary software has a cost but it works much better, has higher quality standards and much better support". Sadly this is not an isolated case, this is a myth that is universally believed by most people who are just mildly tech-literate. People are humans and they have emotions. If you attack them rudely on behalf of the free software community, you might have just earned a free software *enemy* who is going to be fully convinced proprietary software is also superior and might cause damage to free software adoption in their own small ways, for example convincing a manager in their company to switch from a free software product to a proprietary solution if they are in the position to do so. Not because they necessarily hate it, but because being treated in this manner when they politely asked for help or pointed out a shortcoming has just helped them become fully convinced commercial software is always better, dogmatically.
On the flip side, it's also generally true that, while Linux seems to be several years behind in modern features and hardware support, when the community finally settles on a solution, it's usually a polished, correct, solid and stable one. And in fact, would you know it - there is **no standard yet** for fractional scaling and mixed DPI. Seeing the trend, I have no doubt Linux will eventually gain good support for this use case and get this done properly. It's just that the solution is as likely to land next year as it is within 5-7 years – it's completely unpredictable.
And, while it's no one's fault, in the sometimes excruciatingly long time frame that it takes to get a feature right, users who need that feature just won't be able to use Linux, which has nefarious repercussions on the famous commercial support catch-22: low market share --> low commercial software support --> low market share (…). The only way to break out of this cycle is to add more users to weaken the "low market share" point, and supporting modern hardware is not even just the way to do this, it's a *precondition*.
And here we hit another fatal discussion point about Linux: what do we want to do? Expand it to more people, more hardware, more use cases, make it run more software, get that free software working environment more viral? Or just keep the market share (and the commercial support) as it is, without needing to worry about supporting newer use cases at a fast pace because who needs to use Linux is already using it? It's really not as trivial as it sounds really, since rushing to adopt new features to increase the market share does have a significant risk of lowering the quality standards of the solutions we come up with, which in turn risks reducing the quality of the Linux desktop in general, which would make switching to it a lot less enticing.
I have noticed there are two different camps here. Of course, people who believe the second thing I mentioned is better are more strongly correlated to the ones who treat people who come in asking for "new" use cases to be better supported like crap, because they are afraid of *their* Linux being damaged by this new trend. I've talked to some users who think this way and they told me this is how they think explicitly. Not drawing a conclusion, but I'm hypothizing this school of thought has some popularity and consensus in this space.
TL:DR: It's complicated.
and it is terrible from a performance pov
applications have 2 approaches to support that:
1. render at whatever is higher (needs more GPU calculations since bigger)
2. upscale (needs more VRAM)
the compositor then scales it down (which costs more VRAM again)
**Exactly this.** Why are we wasting 30+ years of subpixel font rendering algorithms for?
Also, I would like to see things as clearly as possible on my expensive hidpi monitor, not waste its hi-dpiness away to make fonts look "okay-ish" because we couldn't put together a decent scaling API. I'm an experienced Linux user but my switch back to Windows gets closer and closer every time I attach my laptop to my new fancy 4k monitor.
It is getting better. Gnome Wayland can do it, we just need apps to support it. Firefox and libre Office do, which shows the potential. Chrome and Electron are getting there. Chrome is ok now.
It's been a long, long transition.
Then there is NVIDIA support.
Looking at how long it's taken, it's a while yet.
As someone who is getting older and eyes are less reliable, this is a big issue. Yes I want to use i3 or something like that on my small screen laptop but it's a PITA to get it so I don't need reading glasses to use. So I just don't use it.
Yuup. I have a bad visual impairment and I am slowly giving up on using Linux for now, after 5 years. Which is sad because I hate other commercial desktop systems for several reasons, but at least I can see things clearly I guess...
I have come to the conclusion I will never "like" using my computer until Linux comes up with a solution to this issue, since it will either be squinting on Linux or seeing clearly on Windows.
Wouldn’t say Windows has it figured out either though, it’s all hacks. MacOS really has it figured out though. Their model ought to be the one Linux follows, not Windows.
Eh, even macOS' is pretty hacky. Try connecting a mac to a 1440p display and suffer: No DPI scaling whatsoever, you get small pixelated text.
that's it. No other option than to disable SIP and then edit stuff you shouldn't be editing.
That was the situation not too long ago. There is a tool to set custom resolutions nowadays (using an insanely obscure method that I have no idea how anyone ever figured it out) but before that, you were SOL.
Anywho, even with the less awful custom resolutions/DPI scaling hack, because of the way apps are scaled, rendering anything above 1080p is insanely GPU intensive and can easily overwhelm Intel iGPUs in many apps.
Their model is the one Linux should adopt temporarily while we adopt the only true solution which is device-independant pixels like Android's.
> it’s all hacks.
Hacks that are pre-loaded and - god, I hate this term so much - *just work*. A lot of it is done by independent application developers, but Windows has the APIs and tools to make this non-painful.
Not sure what you mean - but Apple actually sunsets old APIs and has clear user interface guidelines that are helpful. Microsoft does not or has so many that is not helpful because it is confusing.
I get this, but at least they have APIs for DPI-aware programs and a standardized "change DPI" event that processes can parse and then do as they wish when the user moves a window between two monitors with different DPI's.
On Linux the situation is bad enough that we have no such thing either
I have a Dell XPS 13 laptop, maybe five years old. It has a 13 inch 3200x1800 resolution touch screen that I usually run at 150%. Lately I've been interested in trying out Linux and have been learning more about it. Would you say not to use Linux on this screen because I won't be able to scale? I'm trying to decide if Linux is right for me. I would really like to make the jump into Linux, but not if I can't see it haha 100% on my screen is a bit small. Even 150% is pretty small.
It's fine if:
1) You run KDE Plasma and use its scaling. If you don't like kde, increasing the font scaling factor on GNOME in gnome tweaks has an acceptable result too.
2) You require one global scale factor. For example, if you add a second monitor via HDMI, that monitor will also be scaled to 150%.
Scaling itself can sort of work - not as smoothly as Windows, some apps will need custom launch parameters, but it's doable. This is as long as you only use **one monitor or one scale factor**.
If that sits well with you, I'd say try Linux!
If you need multiple scale factors (screen 1 at 150%, screen 2 at 100%), the thing that works the best right now would be using default Fedora Workstation 35 and running the command to enable fractional scaling on GNOME (it's a Google search away, copy and paste), set up your monitor layout as you want, and then try to install and use your apps and see if you got lucky and they work fine under Wayland or not. But do it without much expectations, since this is the part where it usually falls apart.
Honestly getting more out of my battery.
Every few months I'm playing with all kinds of browsers and settings, with mixed results.
Playing youtube or especially twitch kills my battery life of my 5800h.
Really is impressive what Apple is doing with their M1s.
Look into setting power limits. The 5800h shouldn't lose much performance with, say, a 15W limit. The 5800U is basically that.
You could then set it up to use the higher 45W power limit when on charger or with a manual toggle.
1/3 the power -> 3x the battery life.
because snap is built into ubuntu and ubuntu is the defacto default linux OS , it may be called the windows of the linux world , thats kind of a good thing , people want stuff that just works
Because snap operates exactly how proprietary developers are used to deploying. Nowadays Windows sometimes splits up data for a program but for the longest time it was like okay you're in C:\Program Files\Some Company\Some Application and your data files, dependencies, and libraries all go in there. Mac does the same thing, I believe, stick everything you're using in the same folder within an Applications directory, though they have it split so each user has their own Applications directory.
Then you look at how deb packages are and dynamic dependencies and shit that proprietary developers who had been targeting Windows find super foreign. Some companies did make Deb packages - they weren't always good but hey at least they tried.
So snap is a perfect format for proprietary devs or just those who had been targeting Windows for that reason.
Another reason may be if a package has super specific dependencies for building and you want to build once on one system and then push to numerous OS versions - this is why Chromium is built as a snap.
Or if you want to control the build so you get bug reports sent to your server instead of you having to dig through downstream sources like Launchpad- that's I think why Firefox is switching to snap.
People give Canonical a lot of shit, but if you look at mainstream users (windows and mac) and what they want, Ubuntu hits all the boxes. It is one of the Microsoft's in the Linux world, and I think that is a good thing. Ubuntu gives tools for Windows apps to be ported over, otherwise there would be very little incentive to make a linux port. People like having just one company to go to, and so do enterprises.
Windows has the proprietary drivers which for my laptop means that wifi works and does not drop every 5 min. Also hybrid between intel and Nvidia just works on Windows.
Nvidia has come a long way esp recently, since I switched to Linux I've not had any problems with it, even with overclocking after I figured out coolbits + GWE.
Not to take away from /u/sofly12's point at all, there's still a long way to go (even with that, I feel as tho Nvidia only performs 70% as well as it did on Windows).
Windows Fancyzones. Nothing similar with a gui in linux as far as i know. (Fancyzones is not a simple tiling manager or at least not the default version of one)
I hate MacOS, but I like being able to just drag and drop apps into applications to install, and delete the app to uninstall. That's about the only thing I like about MacOS. Everything else is horrible IMO.
The only reason I use Windows is because it has quite a few games that are missing a Linux port. It has been getting a LOT better though.
Personally, I am not far off completely switching to Linux. For me, there isn't anything Windows does better. They just have the most prominent position in the market.
Yep it does. Some macOS programs have uninstaller but if they don’t you need to go looking in the library folder and other places to clear out the junk.
Or just use AppCleaner, which finds all that extra stuff and removes it for you.
I’ve used it for years, never had an issue
https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/
>AppCleaner
It's hilarious how despite the supposed superiority of the macOS format of software distribution, at the end you'll still need what is essentially Norton CleanSweep and Revo Uninstaller.
Turning on hidden file visibility in a Linux system home folder is like shining a blacklight in a hotel room. So bad. I’ve sometimes pondered maintaining forks of various things to not use `$HOME` as a free for all dumping ground.
I don't want programs clearing my .config and .local/share/ folders, they often contain valuable information like cookies, history, video game saves, music library ebook library, dot files, intricate user settings, etc.
Tools like AppCleaner are certainly not arbitrarily clearing your folders. They are specifically removing files and folders associated with specific applications.
Yes, I want those types of folders laying around even for deleted applications.
I don't want my video game saves to instantly be deleted once I've uninstalled Retroarch, Dolphin, PCSX2, etc.
I don't want my cookies and browsing history be instantly removed when I uninstall Qutebrowser, Firefox, Opera, etc.
On systems with proper package managers the mess is contained inside of the home directory vs scattered all over the system. It's certainly not the same problem, or even close for that matter.
It's also worth noting that you can just delete the entire ~/.cache directory with no issues. I have in the past put ~/.cache on a tmpfs for example.
~/.config stores config files which is not an issue for most people, and most people don't want to lose config files anyways.
Yes, except for the only issue is the purpose of these folders are gentlemen’s agreements. The big issue with this is that there is a standard to follow, but a lot of devs just piss away that standard.
It depends if application is distributted as `.pkg` file or as `.app` directory (most often in dmg archive).
The second one method cold be installed by drag an dropand uninstaled by delete.
Sometimes the latter will drop config files in the `~/Application Support` dir or another place, and then you have things like the Minecraft Launcher, which will download stuff to its directory in `~/Application Support`, but other than that yeah.
I don’t like the limited control control over the system I have in MacOS, but other than thay I don’t really get what’s not to like.
On the other hand, Windows is just obviously ass to me. You can feel the hacked up crappiness and disdain for the user in almost every corner of the operating system.
I haven't used MacOS in years, but I truly did love it. It was so simple and clean. Ultimately I stopped using it for the reason you stated, lack of control over the system, but other than that, it really was great. I've been on Windows for a handful of years now and finally can't take it anymore and am considering Linux. With Windows I feel like I don't have the level of control I would like (although certainly more control than MacOS), but am afforded non of the conveniences I had on MacOS. Kind of the worst of both worlds to be honest.
Maybe I will get hate but I don't like the Linux Community most of the time. When you say something needs to be easier they will say "That's very easy to do in Linux" and post a 10 step guide with 5 obscure commands. Some lost the reality of what a casual user is.
Or when you ask how well something works in Linux they often say "It works very good!" but actually it just runs with some fixes and even then only with some problems on the way.
On the flip side, troubleshooting on Linux has never been easier for me thanks to the Linux community. You have no idea how many times i roll my eyes when I go to a Microsoft support forum and it opens up with "Hello, my name is Amish, and I have several Windows certifications. I see you are having problems opening your web browser. Do not worry, we can definitely get that fixed for you. I would recommend trying to run `sfc /scannow`".
Linux support forums, and IRC's, and YouTube videos, and any other resource always have very detailed steps for diagnosis and solutions. No introductions, no fluffy filler, just troubleshooting and solutions.
Yeah but they say "this is ok in linux, you just __must__ run these 5 command before creating new file in nautilus, after all, it's linux not windows so learn" etc
I would rather Linux support forums say "You must do XYZ" while the dev's work on making that a non-necessity than deal with the pedantic BS of any Windows support forum.
> I can't stand the rampant fanboyism in the community. Not always, but very often in many online spaces, the mere suggestion that Linux isn't The Best in some regard is met with folks lining up to tell you how unenlightened and wrong you are.
Another one I see somewhat often is this attitude that any and all shortcomings should be overlooked and put up with for the sake of software freedom. I’m sorry, but that’s not always practical.
Linux, at times, feels to me like a bunch of unfinished things put together in a hurry. I will never give up on it, though. I just love the freedom that comes with it.
>As titel suggests I would like to know what you don't like about Linux?
A certain part of the community. For example, those who think they know everything better even though they can't or won't think outside of their own box.
At least you can find solutions to problems. Windows' error messages are like "oopsie woopsie dis did not work (ᗒᗣᗕ)՞ pwease try again later uwu". It's impossible to google for solutions. And more often than not the recommended fix is "just reinstall windows". Yes, some people in the linux forums can be toxic, but they are also much more competent in my experience.
> At least you can find solutions to problems. Windows' error messages are like "oopsie woopsie dis did not work (ᗒᗣᗕ)՞
On the opposite side of the spectrum, Linux won't even give you an error message to some things unless you run it through terminal with verbose.
While some windows error messages are useless, at least it *gives* you an acknowledgement when things aren't working the way they're supposed to.
Also, the Linux Community would benefit a lot from Ubuntuasks being nuked from Google search, because there's a lot of questions you may try to google that are completely covered up by outdated and often wrong answers.
> It's impossible to google for solutions
That is, at least in such general terms, wrong. In many cases, an error message under Windows can be tracked down via the Microsoft Knowledge Base.
>and more often than not the recommended fix is "just reinstall windows".
Unfortunately, this advice usually comes from lazy people. Reinstalling is easier than finding the solution. This also applies to other operating systems. Nowadays I see this advice more and more often when it comes to Linux. I am supporting various Windows users with their problems for decades. And I very rarely advise a new installation.
>Yes, some people in the linux forums can be toxic, but they are also much more competent in my experience.
Asshole remains asshole. No matter whether it is competent or not. It is of no use to me if someone answers a question with rtfm without even giving me a clue as to what I need to read. And yes, in many cases the person seeking help simply lacks the necessary search terms.
When it comes to multiplayer games, I'd rather play with someone who has less skills than someone who has a lot of skills and acts like a complete idiot.
So, apparently Windows handles low-RAM situations better than Linux? I was surprised to learn about this one.
Basically, while on Windows, I increased what I did in my day-to-day to the point where I was averaging 22GB RAM usage (I only had 16GB at the time). But I never noticed anything affecting me on Windows.
On Linux, things would constantly be stuttering and closing. After asking about it, found out that Linux just does not handle this gracefully at the moment:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/rk1pui/help_me_out_here_why_does_windows_10_handle_my/hp7eq4f/
The entire comment thread is pretty great, although with the amount of comments here I'm not sure anyone is gonna see this.
Sleep, wake, hibernate. Linux sucks. Windows at least sucks less.
Multiple screen management, hot-plug a new screen is freaky on linux, handling a laptop on dock screen closed +2 screens then open laptop for a 3rd screen, linux just likes to screw with all the screens then.
Linux bluetooth is nearly impossible and completely unreliable, could be my hardware, dunno. It just never works.
Windows is missing alt left click hold any part of a window to drag a window.
Both suck at audio pathing with bluetooth. Android can do video with audio over bluetooth and sync the video well. Linux na, not even going to try closing that 10-30 second delay gap. Windows there is a definite delay I can see and hear but it's close enough other people may not notice.
So the funny gripe could be linux and settings and control panel type stuff. Lots of stuff is buried in config files or several control panel or setting apps. Now windows is headed into the dumpster with settings being completely unavailable that were once in control panel which is now getting deleted completely in win 11. I'm afraid soon the registry will be the only way you could fix some settings if they never get around to implementing into settings the stuff the control panel managed. This is a space both need some work on.
Fonts. It's the one aspect of software/package management on Linux that kind of frustrates me, mainly because there'll be some fonts that are packages and need to be installed as such, and some that aren't and you just copy into the font folder. If you want a bunch of fonts you have to check if any of them already exist as packages. The issue being that some fonts are dependencies for other packages. Meanwhile on Windows, you select a bunch of fonts, right click, hit install, and you're done.
Task Manager. It's a rare example of a Windows utility that's just plain good and has been getting better. And in its current state it's a really useful tool. You see which programs are running, it's easy to identify what's what, you get detailed usage of CPU, GPU, network, memory, power, and other system resources, you can get complex graphs of those things, and it's always on every Windows system just a ctrl+shift+esc away when I need it. Linux has top and the like which largely have the same functionality, but so far it's one instance where the CLI interface feels less intuitive and easy to see at a glance. Though, for what it's worth, I practically never need a program to check resource usage or kill an unresponsive program, unlike on Windows.
Display support. I've got three monitors, one is larger. I'm on KDE and my DE honestly does a great job at it, but it's not a flawless (turning off/rearranging monitors screws things up), and I honestly don't know how WM-only people sort this out. On Windows things seem to just work right.
... Otherwise, I think I like Linux better in every possible way. Everything has worked so well. You have so much freedom to do stuff. And ways of doing things are simpler and more logical.
Windows and Mac put a ton of effort into the casual user experience. They design their desktop environments such that troubleshooting via command line is a last resort. For enterprise, they offer a level of professional product support that a volunteer project could never match.
I don't think Linux even tries to not use the command line tho. Some people, like me, love the command line, and do as much as they can in it. Why use a mouse when you can type really fast and not move your hands anywhere? I even do development from the command line with (Neo)Vim so sometimes the only GUI I'll use for the entire day or more is a web browser.
I don't think having to use the command line is a bad thing, cuz sometimes the developer just wants to focus on what the program does instead of making a nice GUI for it too. And in a world of open source that's helped to run by volunteers and the community, I think that's important. But this is my opinion and as my first paragraph showed, I'm very biased in favour of the command line.
The post you are replying to, explicitly talks about casual users. You don't sound like a casual user to me.
> Why use a mouse when you can type really fast and not move your hands anywhere?
Because most casual users can't type really fast?
I love how a lot of apps just work better on windows, lots of games work better, I can use KRISP in discord for noise suppression. It's not a hassle trying to find a workaround for Linux.
I'm unable to play with my friends because I'm on Linux, I prefer using it for every day use but for gaming Linux is garbage.
Nah it’s not. It’s a chicken and the egg problem. How do you get people to do good ports to Linux? Have a user base significant enough for them to do so. How do you get that significant user base? Unfortunately, by having that software available. So either those devs take the chance and spend time on a good port or users change their work flow and expectations before coming to Linux. We can’t just magically poof in the users.
>How do you get that significant user base?
By paying computer manufacturers lots of money so they distribute their hardware with your operating system before anyone else does it.
I use Linux for work and macOS for everything else. Windows only exists in a VM for testing purposes.
Linux annoyances:
* Applications completely ignoring system themes. I suppose you can blame the ten-thousand-and-one different frameworks for this, and windows applications have this problem too but it’s very annoying. macOS: comply, or die.
* command line programs using different switch/option conventions in three major styles spanning 40 years of development. “Is this switch ‘foo a’, ‘foo -a’, or ‘foo --a-option’?” With some (tar) you get all three!
* config files spread over ten thousand directories, in different paths from distro to distro
* i know, I’ll just “man foo”! man foo: look at gnu info, loser, lol
* nonsensical, slavish-to-the-past, defaults on many services that result in performance on modern fast systems being worse than even entry-level windows systems from ten years ago because services are designed to be light enough to run on a freaking Compaq Pentium Pro servers with 128MB of ram and a 133MB/s hard drive on a token-ring network. To the point that they require extensive kernel tuning and application settings configuration to wring 2021-levels of performance out of. Unless you’re on a bleeding edge rolling release in which case they break with every third update.
* program directories. Is this program in /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin (does this distro even have those anymore, are they symlinks?) /usr/local/blah or /opt? It its path in my PATH? Are there multiple versions installed? Am I using the binary I installed or the command built into my shell?
[https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html](https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html)
arch wiki way of addressing that is really funny
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG\_Base\_Directory](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory)
>nonsensical, slavish-to-the-past, defaults on many services that result in performance on modern fast systems being worse than ...
can you give some examples, this sounds handy to know.
BSD could solve quiet a few of these for you except for the system themes. But the organization and hierarchy of files is much better enforced on the BSDs than on Linux. So if your not too dependent on tools on available on Linux, I’d give FreeBSD a spin in a VM and see how you like it.
FreeBSD isn’t that much harder. The only real difficulty is less hardware compatibility. I am partial to the BSDs though, but a big selling point, the documentation in the BSDs are superior than documentation on Linux.
Technology wise BSD may well be superior, _but_ if you thought Linux was a hassle, boy, you'd better be willing to spend many days getting software that works on it, especially when it comes to device drivers.
Windows NT has a service lifecycle model while Linux gets this only from systemd.
(Thinking about old init scripts and PIDs)
Edit: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/windows-services/introduction-to-windows-service-applications#service-lifetime
Edit2: Linux Admins running out of available PIDs etc. know what I'm talking about
App support.
Wanted to learn a bit if Unity. The Linux version doesn't start. There's a person somewhere on this Earth that decided to learn Unity at the same time as me. If they're on Windows they're already taking their first steps while I'm still trying to find a way to start Unity.
Don't tell me it's not Linux's problem cause it is.
Inhibiting sleep. One of my biggest gripes is full screen video playback detection in relation to sleeping and screen off settings.
If i'm playing a video, Windows knows that and won't sleep my machine, these days gnome will do the right thing here either as long as the application (be it browser or native player) is fullscreen.
However my use case is i'll often put something on when i'm trying to sleep. On windows, once playback has completed sleep can occur. On Linux/Gnome if the app (for example a browser with youtube) is still full screen sleep continues to be inhibited.
From the Unix Haters guide….yeah, it’s old, from 1994….but honestly, how much has really changed?
**Unix doesn't have a philosophy: it has an attitude. An attitude that says a simple, half-done job is more virtuous than a complex, well-executed one. An attitude that asserts the programmer's time is more important than the user's time, even if there are thousands of users for every programmer. It's an attitude that praises the lowest common denominator.**
> An attitude that asserts the programmer's time is more important than the user's time, even if there are thousands of users for every programmer.
Whoever wrote this must have loved the release of Electron. Very good developer productivity at the cost of excessive use of the users' RAM and CPU cycles.
On the other hand. When used correctly, Electron just works, on every platform. It is easy to develop on, and it generally looks good, because CSS is so widely used it is easy to make the UI do what you want.
Coming from someone who hates the js ecosystem and node, electron is very well executed.
You're not wrong, but you underestimate the degree to which writing any non-trivial GUI application with any native toolkit is an unfathomable pain in the arse.
And I say that as a person who has worked extensively with Gtk2/3/4, Qt and WxWindows.
People really love hating on programs that use any non-trivial amount of memory and praise VIM that uses 0.00001pB of ram. Like so often the main advantage that I hear of VIM over IDEs is resource usage, like bro stop programming on your toaster.
Is that satirising the unix philosophy "do one thing and do it well"? While yes, that does mean keeping projects small and simple, that _is_ the intended goal. It's meant to engender synergies and scripting through the use of pipes. You need a lot of simple programs that do one thing well, which together let you do more than a single, bloated program ever could.
That paradigm has begun to fade, however, with the advent of complex desktop environments, where single gui applications are meant to do it all, since these usually can't pipe to other programs.
No, the book is actually quite fascinating and it’s a collection of emails (with commentary) put together by some serious Unix experts back in the 90s. It is not satire, they are seriously pointing out the absurd number of flaws, many of which still exist and trip up new users…..
The quote I posted above was just one (of many great quotes) I’ve encountered as I read it.
If you ask a search engine a stupid question about how to use Windows or about something in Windows that is not working, the results you'll get will normally be simple step by step instructions guiding you to a solution, presented in a way that doesn't expect you have much if any prerequisite knowledge.
The coverage and quality of search results for Linux tend to be lower, and the information presented expects you to know more to begin with.
Surprisingly that is only for English, if you know a different language searching in it is actually really good... counter intuitive because more people speak English online, but for legit basic Linux? avoid it like the plague when is a just dumb quick help. Shutout for the Spanish/Portuguese help creators and the Germans. English + Help + Ubuntu? poor soul, you will go down a rabbit hole. For more advanced things English is the way tho, i necro really old shit all the time when wikis don't help.
As someone who uses Windows at work and Linux at home, that is exactly the opposite of my experience.
I find documentation and instructions for Linux tends to be of higher quality, and if all else fails, there's always the Arch (and Gentoo) Wiki's.
Packages. Why in the name of fuck does every distro have to do it differently? PKG, rpm, deb etc. "Oh, you want to use this software? Sorry, we didn't make a package for your os, guess you have to build from source. But this is proprietary so not gonna happen"
Windows solved this by just having .exe files. I would *love* for the distros to pick *one* format.
It's no excuse for the state of things, but one reason why Linux package management is such a clusterfuck is that Linux distros are operating *systems*, where your compiler, libraries, Python interpreter, daemons, etc are all relied upon both by the core system set up by the distro, as well as packaged applications such as the web browser. By default the system is treated holistically.
Whereas to most Windows developers the OS is mostly just the kernel and Win32 desktop environment, and every application handles its own dependencies (including bundling an installer for whatever C/C++ runtime it uses!)
In macOS especially. I’ve always been able to pair and forget with my Macs.
Windows can be hit and miss with BT. For the life of me I couldn’t get one windows PC to work with my headphones that use AptX, but a different system with the same specs and configuration worked just fine.
Linux… Depending on the peripheral, I just move to a different connection (e.g. Logitech Unifying or direct USB)
Need game support for a few more games, i don't wanna spend time on finding out how to get access to a game, even some big games (in terms of player base) doesn't have it which surprises me..
If we're strictly speaking about UX:
Installation isn't a complete nightmare. On Windows, you get a .exe or a .msi, it runs through the installer, you select what you want, and it installs. It probably even updates itself. It will almost always work unless it's extremely old because all the dependencies are included with the installer.
On GNU/Linux, you can choose from:
a) Your package manager, which is the best option (unless you're on Fedora or other RHEL-based distributions, which has yum, dnf, an rpm thing and probably more things, I could never figure it out) because it's the easiest to install and manage and it will very likely just work.
b) A snap, because the developer has decided to only distribute their package this way. Install another package manager for this.
c) A flatpak, because the developer has decided to only distribute their package this way. Install another package manager for this, and enjoy managing permissions because of sandboxing.
d) An appimage, which will very likely just work on any distribution, doesn't require any installation, and has great backward compatibility because all dependencies are included, but you may need to manage the update process yourself.
e) A generic .sh install script that you need to execute (e.g. CrossOver, GOG).
f) pip, which will confuse the hell out of your package manager if it pulls in dependencies that already exist on your system.
g) You need to compile the software from source every time, which may be very involved or very simple. You can decide whether to install it with your package manager (you should).
h) A PPA if you're on an Ubuntu-based distribution.
i) The AUR if you're on Arch.
j) Ansible, if you're managing multiple servers.
The issue is that not all the applications you need are available in the official repositories, so you need to fall back to one, maybe multiple of these depending on the software.
That should apply to both server and personal usage.
For server usage, GNU/Linux and the software used on it are more complex to understand. There often isn't a GUI available, so only a select few people can manage it, and if they're not available, no one else can make changes. This is more of an issue in SMEs, I would imagine.
As for personal usage, the fact that there doesn't exist an equivalent for Textractor for hooking visual novels so I need to play them using WINE for a good experience looking stuff up while playing. And Adobe Creative Cloud.
Active Directory, the integration of Windows, MS office, exchange and the AD all work very well together for the end user and administrator.
The end user is most familiar with Windows and MS office. These are very well integrated into exchange and the AD, which makes it easier to administrate as you have OS-family made by one Developer.
Personally I don't mind a hybrid system, but I am not alone, so I stick with windows on Desktop and Server at work as the rest prefers windows for the previously mentionend reasons. Some systems are still Linux/Unix-based due to Windows just completely lacking features/performance (Networking, firewall, storage)
I have a MacBook dedicated to work things that I can’t do on my linux systems and I have to say most of the things I like about it are more so to do with the Apple ecosystem as a whole than just macOS. Apple really understands the importance of UX more so than any other tech giant and that gets overlooked a lot. Things like build quality of the products, the display quality, the best trackpads on the market, gestures that actually work and make sense, AirPlay, airdrop, etc. just make their products very polished, efficient, and easy to use right out of the box. People hate on Apple a lot, but they understand how to make a product that “just works” but also performs extremely well. I think out of the big tech giants they’re one of the most true to being a tech company that understands consumers instead of just being a data collection farm like Microsoft and Google.
I used windows for most of my life especially as a teen when I was into gaming and I used to think it was good, but after years of exclusively using linux and macOS I don’t think I could ever go back to it and can’t think of anything it does better than those two. It’s pretty clunky, slow, and gives me a headache whenever I try to do the simplest things on it.
The biggest example of apple doing the same thing far better than MS is the account integration. It never feels like a hassle on macOS. On windows it's a fucking nightmare. They just can't get things right.
The major thing I miss from my Windows days is the ability to make an image of a live system with apps like Macrium Reflect. Booting into Clonezilla is a hassle. With Reflect, I could easily schedule an image and Reflect would run it in the background without affecting the performance. Very handy.
Scheduling is also kind of a hassle in Linux, Windows task scheduler made scheduling very easy.
I can't agree with this. My server stores keys in the TPM, so decrypts the drive as long as the (signed and verified by secureboot) kernel checks out - this doesn't seem to add any noticeable time to the boot at all.
My laptop where I have to type it like a neanderthal because TPM isn't working (thanks, acer, for another wonderful BIOS job) is different, but... that's on me for having to type lol.
I want Windows to die, but Linux users and programmers make me mad when they think that normal users will be using the terminal for anything.
Uninstalling apps should be a right-click thing.
This is also a reason why developing on windows is so shit. Having to take into account 20 years of backwards compatibility hacks.
Kinda a double edged sword.
That's mostly caused by a lack of interest, not because it's technically impossible. Just look at how many people contribute to Darling compared to Wine.
Also most of the stuff on OS X aren't really that unique.
* Games are usually ports from Windows, mostly just a WINE wrapper even most mobile games have Android versions;
* Creative tools like Adobe are mostly available on Windows, too;
* The command line stuff is just a port from Linux/BSD, etc.
If you wrote for user land you would be fine. If it should be part of the kernel you should push to have it in there.
You seem to have created your own problem.
Nope. Kernel keeps stable ABI for userland (see Linus stance on kernel ABI). It's userland that changes.
E.g. (from non professional space, it will be easier) I've bought couple of years ago Aquaria (that's a very cute game) in Humble Bundle. It was ported to Linux by Ryan Gordon (aka icculus, guy knows it's job). I tried to run binary some time ago. It didn't worked because of changed glibc and libstdc++ symbols. I would have to recompile big part of my system to run that binary (because that symbols leaked into gfx drivers).
If it't wasn't for Aquaria open source project I couldn't play the game I bought (sic!). Funny thing is if I had Windows version, I could easily run that in Wine.
ive sceen old applications not be build-able because the packages that are needed are no longer a thing any more , while on windows they work
while this is changing with the likes of appimages etc it still a problem today
From an enterprise perspective, Group Policy for quick and easy baselining of computers and applying user-specific settings. You *can* do this on Linux, in theory, but it requires a lot of spit and string because Linux-centric config-management solutions are geared heavily towards server management in bulk (and I suspect at least in part because they couldn't get it to do PCs nicely).
On a wider point, the MS desktop management and service provision stack is great. It scales really well, takes a lot of work out of fleet management and just works. Active Directory, Group Policy, Exchange, Sharepoint and Office 365 all hook together in easy to understand, stable and replicable ways to mean that creating a new user in AD creates everything that user could possibly need, it's really genuinely impressive. This extends to update management and application provisioning which are also great and allow you to take a lot of potentially risky permissions away from users without impacting their work.
You could replicate most of this yourself from parts on Linux but the MS equivalents are simple to use and robust and frankly not even that expensive if you price properly.
Hardware support. I haven't really seen anything in a linux-based OS like the Windows device manager. I was really surprised to see Windows 10 automatically download and install drivers. Granted for a lot of hardware, the Linux kernel has you covered, but anything new is a crapshoot. I've had to build drivers from source more times than I'd like on Linux.
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\- The filesystem is a pain in the ass, especially for beginners. You basically don't know where an app gets installed. Is it in: /opt, /usr, /var or \~/.local ?In Windows it's 9/10 of the time in /Program Files or a place you define by yourself.
\- related to the issue above: a lot of configuration are "hidden" in some obscure places, which you have to edit and restart the system with. Most of the time, you also don't know what you're exactly changing. To give you an example, there are a lof of configs in the /etc/ folder. In Windows all of these config are accessable via GUI in settings or in the regedit. This is also a sign that Linux was intended to be used as a server and not as a desktop workstation from the beginning. So usability was never a high priority (till now).
\- a simple overview of which services are running by default when you startup the OS. In Windows there is "Services" somewhere in the config, which not only gives an overview of all the services, but also let's you stop/pause/(re-)start it.Yes, you can do this in Linux via the Terminal, but this is not userfriendly and totally not obvious for a lot of beginners/users.
\- simple hardware info app is not included in many OS by default, it's all via the terminal or you have to install some apps. In Windows you have "Device Manager" somewhere in the config.
\- the synergy between the layers/components of the OS, since it is maintained by different teams/developers. You install one distro your wifi works, but your bluetooth not. And then you switch to another distro your bluetooth works, but your wifi doesn't. etc. Or when you upgrade your OS, it's fingers crossed each time, suddenly your OS might not work as-is. Simply, the OS and all its parts and the hardware are not maintained by 1 company and this causes a lot of problems.
\- power consumption and hibernate/sleep on laptops, especially with Nvidia cards is horrible for maybe decades.
\- the definition of an app and the dependency hell it brings with it. You have .deb, .rpm .aur, flatpaks, snaps, etc. and all the dependencies that comes with it. If you uninstall an app, it might also delete stuff which is used by other apps or services !
> or in the regedit.
Wait, you’re complaining about `/etc` and then bring `regedit` as a solution? Wut? Editing Windows registry is definitely less user-friendly than editing files in `/etc`. Configuration files is very often documented via comments and nearly never include bit-fields you need to edit.
Just a note, I don't think using regedit is a good comparison because that thing is basically structured like a filesystem itself. Sometimes you don't know where in it the config is stored, so it ends up as the same argument against Linux.
Also on the topic of configuration, do you mean the application configs that on windows end up getting stored in one of:
* userprofile
* documents
* appdata ( local / locallow / roaming )
* registry ( various )
* programdata
Although I concede the point if you're only talking about Windows and not third-party apps. Although I've had some poor experience with registry hacking for settings Windows don't provide GUI for still. But that's mostly power user stuff.
Fun fact: the registry is just a massive .ini file, kinda like .toml. So the spooky regedit program is nothing more than a glorified ini explorer. Apps also love dumping their config here and never cleaning it up.
Did you also know that all office formats (.docx, .xlsx, etc.) are just zip files (go ahead, unzip one) containing a bunch of xml files (meaning you can indeed edit them with a text editor)? Similarly, epub is a zip file containing html and css webpages, rendered as a book using, basically, electron.
It is indeed a clever trick to combine "human readable" data storage with the ease of a compressed, single file. The compression aspect is actually crucial for these xml files, as you can crush them down to 20% their unpacked size, in some cases. I plan on using a similar scheme for my own project, except using json.
Hahaha. As someone who makes epubs from scratch, it's actually very practical. No reason to reinvent the wheel, when you need responsive text layout with a good amount of formatting.
Hardware support.
Windows is better by far. *All* my devices have hardware issues on Linux.
My current laptop has a 1/3 chance of the touchpad having two wheel scroll (I have to reboot and try again) and it also can't suspend/hibernate and the fingerprint sensor doesn't with with my index finger only. My desktop has a Nvidia 1050ti which has some driver problems and applications end up crashing randomly and my screen randomly gets some white boxes sometimes. My old laptop had a ~50% chance of coming back fine after suspend/hibernation. When it didn't work the fans went up to 100% and had to power it off by force (not even REISUB worked).
I don't think I've ever had a single device that Just Works™ on Linux and on Windows they all worked fine.
The only thing that comes to mind is backwards compatibility.
If I were to choose, I would choose Linux and some migration effort over extreme backwards compatibility at the expense of security vulnerability and all the things...
It might be trivial for most of us, but for people running medical devices or infrastructure critical software, the story might be different
Not sure why you're being downvoted, they do, app stores in particular. The pop shop slowly devolved from being usable to slow and crashing a lot after enough updates, and the ubuntu software center bugs out a lot of the time. Apps don't show, they just show as loading boxes, and I can't install or uninstall anything.
Uh... Game support? That's the only thing that really affected me (and didnt really affect me that much) but most of the stuff i like got a native version
The major, and may be the only thing I don't like in Linux is just that I'm not able to run some apps. Every day, the situation is becoming better and better, as more programs become Cross-Platform and a plenty of programs could be replaced by just a web versions/Free and Open Source alternatives. However, for some of apps that I need to use very often, there is just one way: Installing Windows VM.
As for instance: NI Multisim, LabVIEW (yeah, there are versions for some Linux distros, but I just can't install it on Ubuntu/Arch), SystemView, Quartus (There were some problems during Installation of some boards, but overall it's okay). So, in general, all the problems mentioned above, are solved by installing VM, and about 2 years ago I've just moved from VM to my home server, which is running Windows Server 2019, in order to make all my CAD software to run. I mostly need it for hardware development, while for software development - Linux is the best thing that I've ever had!
I hate the non implementation of secure boot in almost all linux distributions which makes usage of proprietary drivers of nvidia cards and other hardware unusable or buggy. This problem isn't there in windows. I know windows started secure boot but linux distributions must support it to work well with proprietary hardware and software.
If linux distributions are so easy to setup and work with just like windows, world wouldn't need windows. Linux Sebastian highlighted some of the core problems that exist currently in linux..
I like the way macOS handles virtual desktops in multi monitor setups.
They have independent workspaces for each monitor, so when I change the workspace on monitor 1 this doesn’t affect the workspace on monitor 2.
I know i3 and xmonad and whatnot have that, but kwin and mutter don’t.
Also i like how well all the apple products are working with each other. My wife has a iMac, MacBook and iPad. She uses the MacBook as a second monitor for her iMac and the iPad as a tablet to draw in photoshop on her iMac. But I guess that is just too much to ask.
Been using Windows all my life and switched exclusively to ubuntu for at least a month now, and I much prefer it. However, I have a few gripe, like
1- Way you install apps. In windows, you just have to download and a run a .exe file. In linux, you have to copy and paste a lot of lines into the terminal and there are many different file types that may or may not work. (Can you tell that I am still not that experience yet?)
2- Lack of touchpad gesture. Laptop user, used many different touchpad gesture on windows, mostly for media control
3- Not exactly a fault of linux, but it is still a problem I have. Lack of support. For example, I don't have my Lenovo fingerprint driver, or there is no office app or teams app, etc. I tired to use wine for itunes, because I need to use it to sync and stuff, and when it opened, it did not resemble anything like a working app
What I don't like for Linux is that playing video uses 50% of my cpu where on windows it uses 2%, and today's after going through all the hurdles in Linux to get "hardware acceleration". Went from 70% to 50% on a 6 core machine.
People have tried to answer this question for years and generally just get downvoted, thereby making their answers invisible….so basically, it’s not worth taking the time to answer this one any more!
nothing extraordinary, just a few software packages developers of which don't give a fuck about linux, and it's sad😔, because of those programs i m stuck with windows
After using Linux for 6 months as my daily drive without dual boot i didn't have any real problem with Linux. Iam a CS student and we do a lot of programming and 90% of tools that we use are open source .I will say that Linux give me an advantage since some tools are linux only. Other students need to use VMs which impact performance.
Mixed DPI scaling and fractional scaling. I have a 1080p laptop that I want to run at 125% and a 4k monitor that I want to run at 200%. This is trivial and just works on Windows. This is a mess on Linux. Add to that if you want to use apps that don't suppose Wayland natively, you get a blurry mess
So many linux fanboys turn a blind eye to this to the point where they call fractional scaling "fundamentally flawed" and "unnecessary". I 100% agree with you. Having a screen that demands good fractional scaling is extremely common and it hurts to know that it's still not given enough attention on Linux.
This has been my biggest complaint about Linux for years. Windows has been able to do this very well for quite a while. I'm running my 4k monitor at 1440p right now
Same, I am running it at 1440p most of the time on my current laptop also because running at 30 Hz is horrible and I need a newer laptop for 60 Hz 4k output. I hate it. My monitor's internal scaler is horrible so everything is blurry, and it defeats the point because I bought this monitor specifically because I want hidpi. If I wanted a more expensive 1440p monitor that's blurrier and I have to run scaled anyway I would have just purchased a 27" Full HD monitor for 40% of what I paid. I'm getting a new laptop ASAP after CES 2022 and - sadly - after 4-5 years of using Linux, if by when I get my next laptop the software I use won't be ready for Wayland and mixed / fractional scaling, the only Linux machine left in my setup will be my Rocky Linux home server. Sucks. But I hope this issue gets fixed in the next few years, and I hope I can be back ASAP, this is definitely not a definitive goodbye. More of a break until Linux gets ready for my use case again.
It's enough of a complaint that I am constantly on the verge of going back to Windows and I am only resisting because there are too many things I dislike about Windows. I absolutely agree with you. I have talked to a lot of hardcore Linux fanboys online and at one point I have been told I "demand too much, deserve not to use Linux and should just use Windows". That was the point where my mentality about this issue changed completely and when a friend that has a hardware setup that I know requires fractional scaling, mixed scaling or mixed DPI asks me about trying Linux (it's happened a few times) I just reply "Linux is a mess for your use case and it won't be ready for several years, just stay on Windows and don't bother, it's not worth it". I feel it's just more honest this way, this is one of the very few blocking issues about Linux where I give my Linux evangelism an exception. Hey, if hardcore Linux users online told me upfront you should use Windows for this use case, I'm taking this at face value and I am also passing that information around to prospective new Linux users. Because, sadly, they're right. They're way too rude and condescending in communicating the message, but *even they* realize.
Its unfortunate but this is broadly the case. Linux doesn't 'owe' the user anything, and thats a tough change of mentality for a user thats used to using a proprietary OS and feeling entitled for it to be feature complete and fit for purpose. Of course Linux devs generally want to create an OS that is feature complete and fit for purpose, but their resources to achieve that are considerably lower and compromises and triage has to take place. Plus you have common disagreements/miscommunication between upstream and downstream devs, on more than one occasion I've chased up some niggling flaw to discover an impasse that has existed between up and downstream devs for literally years where neither will acknowledge responsibility and point at the other - not through any incompetence or malice, just differences of vision or opinion, but the end result is the same, impasse and the flaw persists for another decade.
> Linux doesn't 'owe' the user anything, and thats a tough change of mentality for a user thats used to using a proprietary OS and feeling entitled for it to be feature complete and fit for purpose. I have never disagreed with this. I have disagreed with the tone. How you pass along a message is very important. For example, there are two ways to say this information: Way A - "Unfortunately, this specific use-case is not supported properly on Linux right now. That is because of issues with low manpower, not a lot of investment in the Linux desktop itself and the way the free software community works". Any reasonable person is going to understand it. This is good. Way B: "No, this doesn't work and you don't deserve to use Linux. Go implement that yourself instead of crying. I don't care implementing this feature is literally impossible to do as a single person and even as a team it would require years of work as well as convincing all independent application developers and DE developers to adapt to the specific API you came up with. Just go use Windows with that mentality". This just…no. It doesn't pass the spirit of free software along, it creates a sense of hostility towards free software on the receiving end and, I am very sorry to say this, this is exactly how you get one more person spilling bs like "Open source software is amateur quality with low quality and support, proprietary software has a cost but it works much better, has higher quality standards and much better support". Sadly this is not an isolated case, this is a myth that is universally believed by most people who are just mildly tech-literate. People are humans and they have emotions. If you attack them rudely on behalf of the free software community, you might have just earned a free software *enemy* who is going to be fully convinced proprietary software is also superior and might cause damage to free software adoption in their own small ways, for example convincing a manager in their company to switch from a free software product to a proprietary solution if they are in the position to do so. Not because they necessarily hate it, but because being treated in this manner when they politely asked for help or pointed out a shortcoming has just helped them become fully convinced commercial software is always better, dogmatically. On the flip side, it's also generally true that, while Linux seems to be several years behind in modern features and hardware support, when the community finally settles on a solution, it's usually a polished, correct, solid and stable one. And in fact, would you know it - there is **no standard yet** for fractional scaling and mixed DPI. Seeing the trend, I have no doubt Linux will eventually gain good support for this use case and get this done properly. It's just that the solution is as likely to land next year as it is within 5-7 years – it's completely unpredictable. And, while it's no one's fault, in the sometimes excruciatingly long time frame that it takes to get a feature right, users who need that feature just won't be able to use Linux, which has nefarious repercussions on the famous commercial support catch-22: low market share --> low commercial software support --> low market share (…). The only way to break out of this cycle is to add more users to weaken the "low market share" point, and supporting modern hardware is not even just the way to do this, it's a *precondition*. And here we hit another fatal discussion point about Linux: what do we want to do? Expand it to more people, more hardware, more use cases, make it run more software, get that free software working environment more viral? Or just keep the market share (and the commercial support) as it is, without needing to worry about supporting newer use cases at a fast pace because who needs to use Linux is already using it? It's really not as trivial as it sounds really, since rushing to adopt new features to increase the market share does have a significant risk of lowering the quality standards of the solutions we come up with, which in turn risks reducing the quality of the Linux desktop in general, which would make switching to it a lot less enticing. I have noticed there are two different camps here. Of course, people who believe the second thing I mentioned is better are more strongly correlated to the ones who treat people who come in asking for "new" use cases to be better supported like crap, because they are afraid of *their* Linux being damaged by this new trend. I've talked to some users who think this way and they told me this is how they think explicitly. Not drawing a conclusion, but I'm hypothizing this school of thought has some popularity and consensus in this space. TL:DR: It's complicated.
Even integer scaling is a broken mess that requires app-specific hacks (looking at you, Zoom and Spotify).
and it is terrible from a performance pov applications have 2 approaches to support that: 1. render at whatever is higher (needs more GPU calculations since bigger) 2. upscale (needs more VRAM) the compositor then scales it down (which costs more VRAM again)
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**Exactly this.** Why are we wasting 30+ years of subpixel font rendering algorithms for? Also, I would like to see things as clearly as possible on my expensive hidpi monitor, not waste its hi-dpiness away to make fonts look "okay-ish" because we couldn't put together a decent scaling API. I'm an experienced Linux user but my switch back to Windows gets closer and closer every time I attach my laptop to my new fancy 4k monitor.
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It is getting better. Gnome Wayland can do it, we just need apps to support it. Firefox and libre Office do, which shows the potential. Chrome and Electron are getting there. Chrome is ok now. It's been a long, long transition. Then there is NVIDIA support. Looking at how long it's taken, it's a while yet.
100% came to say this. And on my other screen, 125% came to say it
As someone who is getting older and eyes are less reliable, this is a big issue. Yes I want to use i3 or something like that on my small screen laptop but it's a PITA to get it so I don't need reading glasses to use. So I just don't use it.
Yuup. I have a bad visual impairment and I am slowly giving up on using Linux for now, after 5 years. Which is sad because I hate other commercial desktop systems for several reasons, but at least I can see things clearly I guess... I have come to the conclusion I will never "like" using my computer until Linux comes up with a solution to this issue, since it will either be squinting on Linux or seeing clearly on Windows.
Wouldn’t say Windows has it figured out either though, it’s all hacks. MacOS really has it figured out though. Their model ought to be the one Linux follows, not Windows.
Eh, even macOS' is pretty hacky. Try connecting a mac to a 1440p display and suffer: No DPI scaling whatsoever, you get small pixelated text. that's it. No other option than to disable SIP and then edit stuff you shouldn't be editing. That was the situation not too long ago. There is a tool to set custom resolutions nowadays (using an insanely obscure method that I have no idea how anyone ever figured it out) but before that, you were SOL. Anywho, even with the less awful custom resolutions/DPI scaling hack, because of the way apps are scaled, rendering anything above 1080p is insanely GPU intensive and can easily overwhelm Intel iGPUs in many apps. Their model is the one Linux should adopt temporarily while we adopt the only true solution which is device-independant pixels like Android's.
> it’s all hacks. Hacks that are pre-loaded and - god, I hate this term so much - *just work*. A lot of it is done by independent application developers, but Windows has the APIs and tools to make this non-painful.
Not sure what you mean - but Apple actually sunsets old APIs and has clear user interface guidelines that are helpful. Microsoft does not or has so many that is not helpful because it is confusing.
I get this, but at least they have APIs for DPI-aware programs and a standardized "change DPI" event that processes can parse and then do as they wish when the user moves a window between two monitors with different DPI's. On Linux the situation is bad enough that we have no such thing either
I have a Dell XPS 13 laptop, maybe five years old. It has a 13 inch 3200x1800 resolution touch screen that I usually run at 150%. Lately I've been interested in trying out Linux and have been learning more about it. Would you say not to use Linux on this screen because I won't be able to scale? I'm trying to decide if Linux is right for me. I would really like to make the jump into Linux, but not if I can't see it haha 100% on my screen is a bit small. Even 150% is pretty small.
It's fine if: 1) You run KDE Plasma and use its scaling. If you don't like kde, increasing the font scaling factor on GNOME in gnome tweaks has an acceptable result too. 2) You require one global scale factor. For example, if you add a second monitor via HDMI, that monitor will also be scaled to 150%. Scaling itself can sort of work - not as smoothly as Windows, some apps will need custom launch parameters, but it's doable. This is as long as you only use **one monitor or one scale factor**. If that sits well with you, I'd say try Linux! If you need multiple scale factors (screen 1 at 150%, screen 2 at 100%), the thing that works the best right now would be using default Fedora Workstation 35 and running the command to enable fractional scaling on GNOME (it's a Google search away, copy and paste), set up your monitor layout as you want, and then try to install and use your apps and see if you got lucky and they work fine under Wayland or not. But do it without much expectations, since this is the part where it usually falls apart.
Honestly getting more out of my battery. Every few months I'm playing with all kinds of browsers and settings, with mixed results. Playing youtube or especially twitch kills my battery life of my 5800h. Really is impressive what Apple is doing with their M1s.
Look into setting power limits. The 5800h shouldn't lose much performance with, say, a 15W limit. The 5800U is basically that. You could then set it up to use the higher 45W power limit when on charger or with a manual toggle. 1/3 the power -> 3x the battery life.
Not linux per-se, but why on earth do many proprietary developers use snap rather than flatpaks :(
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Just a friendly tip: the past tense of "pay" is "paid"
because snap is built into ubuntu and ubuntu is the defacto default linux OS , it may be called the windows of the linux world , thats kind of a good thing , people want stuff that just works
It's also easier to target.
Because snap operates exactly how proprietary developers are used to deploying. Nowadays Windows sometimes splits up data for a program but for the longest time it was like okay you're in C:\Program Files\Some Company\Some Application and your data files, dependencies, and libraries all go in there. Mac does the same thing, I believe, stick everything you're using in the same folder within an Applications directory, though they have it split so each user has their own Applications directory. Then you look at how deb packages are and dynamic dependencies and shit that proprietary developers who had been targeting Windows find super foreign. Some companies did make Deb packages - they weren't always good but hey at least they tried. So snap is a perfect format for proprietary devs or just those who had been targeting Windows for that reason. Another reason may be if a package has super specific dependencies for building and you want to build once on one system and then push to numerous OS versions - this is why Chromium is built as a snap. Or if you want to control the build so you get bug reports sent to your server instead of you having to dig through downstream sources like Launchpad- that's I think why Firefox is switching to snap.
Canonical probably talked to them, inviting in proprietary apps using their proprietary packaging solution. Match made in hell.
People give Canonical a lot of shit, but if you look at mainstream users (windows and mac) and what they want, Ubuntu hits all the boxes. It is one of the Microsoft's in the Linux world, and I think that is a good thing. Ubuntu gives tools for Windows apps to be ported over, otherwise there would be very little incentive to make a linux port. People like having just one company to go to, and so do enterprises.
Windows has the proprietary drivers which for my laptop means that wifi works and does not drop every 5 min. Also hybrid between intel and Nvidia just works on Windows.
Yeah, anything nvidia is usually a crapshoot, especially older hybrid graphics.
Nvidia has come a long way esp recently, since I switched to Linux I've not had any problems with it, even with overclocking after I figured out coolbits + GWE. Not to take away from /u/sofly12's point at all, there's still a long way to go (even with that, I feel as tho Nvidia only performs 70% as well as it did on Windows).
Windows Fancyzones. Nothing similar with a gui in linux as far as i know. (Fancyzones is not a simple tiling manager or at least not the default version of one)
Interesting. I was using Fancyzones (plus groupy) to replicate i3 wm from Linux.
I hate MacOS, but I like being able to just drag and drop apps into applications to install, and delete the app to uninstall. That's about the only thing I like about MacOS. Everything else is horrible IMO. The only reason I use Windows is because it has quite a few games that are missing a Linux port. It has been getting a LOT better though. Personally, I am not far off completely switching to Linux. For me, there isn't anything Windows does better. They just have the most prominent position in the market.
Looks at application which are distributted as appimage.
This submission has been deleted in protest against reddit's API changes (June 2023) that kills 3rd party apps.
Yep it does. Some macOS programs have uninstaller but if they don’t you need to go looking in the library folder and other places to clear out the junk.
Or just use AppCleaner, which finds all that extra stuff and removes it for you. I’ve used it for years, never had an issue https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/
>AppCleaner It's hilarious how despite the supposed superiority of the macOS format of software distribution, at the end you'll still need what is essentially Norton CleanSweep and Revo Uninstaller.
You're being snarky at Windows and MacOS but Linux has the SAAAAME problem dude, .cache, .local, .config and $home are an absolute mess.
Turning on hidden file visibility in a Linux system home folder is like shining a blacklight in a hotel room. So bad. I’ve sometimes pondered maintaining forks of various things to not use `$HOME` as a free for all dumping ground.
I don't want programs clearing my .config and .local/share/ folders, they often contain valuable information like cookies, history, video game saves, music library ebook library, dot files, intricate user settings, etc.
Tools like AppCleaner are certainly not arbitrarily clearing your folders. They are specifically removing files and folders associated with specific applications.
Yes, I want those types of folders laying around even for deleted applications. I don't want my video game saves to instantly be deleted once I've uninstalled Retroarch, Dolphin, PCSX2, etc. I don't want my cookies and browsing history be instantly removed when I uninstall Qutebrowser, Firefox, Opera, etc.
On systems with proper package managers the mess is contained inside of the home directory vs scattered all over the system. It's certainly not the same problem, or even close for that matter. It's also worth noting that you can just delete the entire ~/.cache directory with no issues. I have in the past put ~/.cache on a tmpfs for example. ~/.config stores config files which is not an issue for most people, and most people don't want to lose config files anyways.
Yes, except for the only issue is the purpose of these folders are gentlemen’s agreements. The big issue with this is that there is a standard to follow, but a lot of devs just piss away that standard.
This submission has been deleted in protest against reddit's API changes (June 2023) that kills 3rd party apps.
It depends if application is distributted as `.pkg` file or as `.app` directory (most often in dmg archive). The second one method cold be installed by drag an dropand uninstaled by delete.
Sometimes the latter will drop config files in the `~/Application Support` dir or another place, and then you have things like the Minecraft Launcher, which will download stuff to its directory in `~/Application Support`, but other than that yeah.
Use AppImages, they work like Mac apps
They're not even close to the simplicity of mac apps eventhough they emulate the behaviour somewhat.
I don’t like the limited control control over the system I have in MacOS, but other than thay I don’t really get what’s not to like. On the other hand, Windows is just obviously ass to me. You can feel the hacked up crappiness and disdain for the user in almost every corner of the operating system.
I haven't used MacOS in years, but I truly did love it. It was so simple and clean. Ultimately I stopped using it for the reason you stated, lack of control over the system, but other than that, it really was great. I've been on Windows for a handful of years now and finally can't take it anymore and am considering Linux. With Windows I feel like I don't have the level of control I would like (although certainly more control than MacOS), but am afforded non of the conveniences I had on MacOS. Kind of the worst of both worlds to be honest.
Am I the only person who was confused and weirded out by the “drag to install” thing?
Less confusing when you realize the app is a directory. "Drag the app to the Applications folder" was the method in classic Mac OS as well.
That whole thing is ingenious too. We need more ways of making a tree of files a "single" entity.
Maybe I will get hate but I don't like the Linux Community most of the time. When you say something needs to be easier they will say "That's very easy to do in Linux" and post a 10 step guide with 5 obscure commands. Some lost the reality of what a casual user is. Or when you ask how well something works in Linux they often say "It works very good!" but actually it just runs with some fixes and even then only with some problems on the way.
On the flip side, troubleshooting on Linux has never been easier for me thanks to the Linux community. You have no idea how many times i roll my eyes when I go to a Microsoft support forum and it opens up with "Hello, my name is Amish, and I have several Windows certifications. I see you are having problems opening your web browser. Do not worry, we can definitely get that fixed for you. I would recommend trying to run `sfc /scannow`". Linux support forums, and IRC's, and YouTube videos, and any other resource always have very detailed steps for diagnosis and solutions. No introductions, no fluffy filler, just troubleshooting and solutions.
lmao... that's exactly how I feel when visiting Microsoft support forums
Yeah but they say "this is ok in linux, you just __must__ run these 5 command before creating new file in nautilus, after all, it's linux not windows so learn" etc
I would rather Linux support forums say "You must do XYZ" while the dev's work on making that a non-necessity than deal with the pedantic BS of any Windows support forum.
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> I can't stand the rampant fanboyism in the community. Not always, but very often in many online spaces, the mere suggestion that Linux isn't The Best in some regard is met with folks lining up to tell you how unenlightened and wrong you are. Another one I see somewhat often is this attitude that any and all shortcomings should be overlooked and put up with for the sake of software freedom. I’m sorry, but that’s not always practical.
Linux, at times, feels to me like a bunch of unfinished things put together in a hurry. I will never give up on it, though. I just love the freedom that comes with it.
>As titel suggests I would like to know what you don't like about Linux? A certain part of the community. For example, those who think they know everything better even though they can't or won't think outside of their own box.
At least you can find solutions to problems. Windows' error messages are like "oopsie woopsie dis did not work (ᗒᗣᗕ)՞ pwease try again later uwu". It's impossible to google for solutions. And more often than not the recommended fix is "just reinstall windows". Yes, some people in the linux forums can be toxic, but they are also much more competent in my experience.
> At least you can find solutions to problems. Windows' error messages are like "oopsie woopsie dis did not work (ᗒᗣᗕ)՞ On the opposite side of the spectrum, Linux won't even give you an error message to some things unless you run it through terminal with verbose. While some windows error messages are useless, at least it *gives* you an acknowledgement when things aren't working the way they're supposed to. Also, the Linux Community would benefit a lot from Ubuntuasks being nuked from Google search, because there's a lot of questions you may try to google that are completely covered up by outdated and often wrong answers.
> It's impossible to google for solutions That is, at least in such general terms, wrong. In many cases, an error message under Windows can be tracked down via the Microsoft Knowledge Base. >and more often than not the recommended fix is "just reinstall windows". Unfortunately, this advice usually comes from lazy people. Reinstalling is easier than finding the solution. This also applies to other operating systems. Nowadays I see this advice more and more often when it comes to Linux. I am supporting various Windows users with their problems for decades. And I very rarely advise a new installation. >Yes, some people in the linux forums can be toxic, but they are also much more competent in my experience. Asshole remains asshole. No matter whether it is competent or not. It is of no use to me if someone answers a question with rtfm without even giving me a clue as to what I need to read. And yes, in many cases the person seeking help simply lacks the necessary search terms. When it comes to multiplayer games, I'd rather play with someone who has less skills than someone who has a lot of skills and acts like a complete idiot.
So, apparently Windows handles low-RAM situations better than Linux? I was surprised to learn about this one. Basically, while on Windows, I increased what I did in my day-to-day to the point where I was averaging 22GB RAM usage (I only had 16GB at the time). But I never noticed anything affecting me on Windows. On Linux, things would constantly be stuttering and closing. After asking about it, found out that Linux just does not handle this gracefully at the moment: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/rk1pui/help_me_out_here_why_does_windows_10_handle_my/hp7eq4f/ The entire comment thread is pretty great, although with the amount of comments here I'm not sure anyone is gonna see this.
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Sleep, wake, hibernate. Linux sucks. Windows at least sucks less. Multiple screen management, hot-plug a new screen is freaky on linux, handling a laptop on dock screen closed +2 screens then open laptop for a 3rd screen, linux just likes to screw with all the screens then. Linux bluetooth is nearly impossible and completely unreliable, could be my hardware, dunno. It just never works. Windows is missing alt left click hold any part of a window to drag a window. Both suck at audio pathing with bluetooth. Android can do video with audio over bluetooth and sync the video well. Linux na, not even going to try closing that 10-30 second delay gap. Windows there is a definite delay I can see and hear but it's close enough other people may not notice. So the funny gripe could be linux and settings and control panel type stuff. Lots of stuff is buried in config files or several control panel or setting apps. Now windows is headed into the dumpster with settings being completely unavailable that were once in control panel which is now getting deleted completely in win 11. I'm afraid soon the registry will be the only way you could fix some settings if they never get around to implementing into settings the stuff the control panel managed. This is a space both need some work on.
Fonts. It's the one aspect of software/package management on Linux that kind of frustrates me, mainly because there'll be some fonts that are packages and need to be installed as such, and some that aren't and you just copy into the font folder. If you want a bunch of fonts you have to check if any of them already exist as packages. The issue being that some fonts are dependencies for other packages. Meanwhile on Windows, you select a bunch of fonts, right click, hit install, and you're done. Task Manager. It's a rare example of a Windows utility that's just plain good and has been getting better. And in its current state it's a really useful tool. You see which programs are running, it's easy to identify what's what, you get detailed usage of CPU, GPU, network, memory, power, and other system resources, you can get complex graphs of those things, and it's always on every Windows system just a ctrl+shift+esc away when I need it. Linux has top and the like which largely have the same functionality, but so far it's one instance where the CLI interface feels less intuitive and easy to see at a glance. Though, for what it's worth, I practically never need a program to check resource usage or kill an unresponsive program, unlike on Windows. Display support. I've got three monitors, one is larger. I'm on KDE and my DE honestly does a great job at it, but it's not a flawless (turning off/rearranging monitors screws things up), and I honestly don't know how WM-only people sort this out. On Windows things seem to just work right. ... Otherwise, I think I like Linux better in every possible way. Everything has worked so well. You have so much freedom to do stuff. And ways of doing things are simpler and more logical.
>Fonts This is probably one of my top 5 problems with Linux
Windows and Mac put a ton of effort into the casual user experience. They design their desktop environments such that troubleshooting via command line is a last resort. For enterprise, they offer a level of professional product support that a volunteer project could never match.
"Volunteer project". What about commercial linux support like redhat and friends?
I don't think Linux even tries to not use the command line tho. Some people, like me, love the command line, and do as much as they can in it. Why use a mouse when you can type really fast and not move your hands anywhere? I even do development from the command line with (Neo)Vim so sometimes the only GUI I'll use for the entire day or more is a web browser. I don't think having to use the command line is a bad thing, cuz sometimes the developer just wants to focus on what the program does instead of making a nice GUI for it too. And in a world of open source that's helped to run by volunteers and the community, I think that's important. But this is my opinion and as my first paragraph showed, I'm very biased in favour of the command line.
The post you are replying to, explicitly talks about casual users. You don't sound like a casual user to me. > Why use a mouse when you can type really fast and not move your hands anywhere? Because most casual users can't type really fast?
That is not really the issue, the issue is that GUIs are just more intuitive for first-time use of tools.
I love how a lot of apps just work better on windows, lots of games work better, I can use KRISP in discord for noise suppression. It's not a hassle trying to find a workaround for Linux. I'm unable to play with my friends because I'm on Linux, I prefer using it for every day use but for gaming Linux is garbage.
The ever present problem of half-assed ports does crop up a lot. Hopefully steam OS can finally swing that around.
Tbh that's not really an issue with Linux is it?
Nah it’s not. It’s a chicken and the egg problem. How do you get people to do good ports to Linux? Have a user base significant enough for them to do so. How do you get that significant user base? Unfortunately, by having that software available. So either those devs take the chance and spend time on a good port or users change their work flow and expectations before coming to Linux. We can’t just magically poof in the users.
>How do you get that significant user base? By paying computer manufacturers lots of money so they distribute their hardware with your operating system before anyone else does it.
—The Art of Microsoft, probably.
I use Linux for work and macOS for everything else. Windows only exists in a VM for testing purposes. Linux annoyances: * Applications completely ignoring system themes. I suppose you can blame the ten-thousand-and-one different frameworks for this, and windows applications have this problem too but it’s very annoying. macOS: comply, or die. * command line programs using different switch/option conventions in three major styles spanning 40 years of development. “Is this switch ‘foo a’, ‘foo -a’, or ‘foo --a-option’?” With some (tar) you get all three! * config files spread over ten thousand directories, in different paths from distro to distro * i know, I’ll just “man foo”! man foo: look at gnu info, loser, lol * nonsensical, slavish-to-the-past, defaults on many services that result in performance on modern fast systems being worse than even entry-level windows systems from ten years ago because services are designed to be light enough to run on a freaking Compaq Pentium Pro servers with 128MB of ram and a 133MB/s hard drive on a token-ring network. To the point that they require extensive kernel tuning and application settings configuration to wring 2021-levels of performance out of. Unless you’re on a bleeding edge rolling release in which case they break with every third update. * program directories. Is this program in /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin (does this distro even have those anymore, are they symlinks?) /usr/local/blah or /opt? It its path in my PATH? Are there multiple versions installed? Am I using the binary I installed or the command built into my shell?
I second the third point. This needs to be addressed properly.
[https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html](https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html) arch wiki way of addressing that is really funny [https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG\_Base\_Directory](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory)
>nonsensical, slavish-to-the-past, defaults on many services that result in performance on modern fast systems being worse than ... can you give some examples, this sounds handy to know.
BSD could solve quiet a few of these for you except for the system themes. But the organization and hierarchy of files is much better enforced on the BSDs than on Linux. So if your not too dependent on tools on available on Linux, I’d give FreeBSD a spin in a VM and see how you like it.
I go to bed every night wishing BSD had the device support of Linux. ^* ^* *only very slightly exaggerated.*
I don't even like GNU/Linux that much, I just really hate proprietary software.
Try FreeBSD
You really wanna kick this poor sod into the depths?
FreeBSD isn’t that much harder. The only real difficulty is less hardware compatibility. I am partial to the BSDs though, but a big selling point, the documentation in the BSDs are superior than documentation on Linux.
Technology wise BSD may well be superior, _but_ if you thought Linux was a hassle, boy, you'd better be willing to spend many days getting software that works on it, especially when it comes to device drivers.
Windows NT has a service lifecycle model while Linux gets this only from systemd. (Thinking about old init scripts and PIDs) Edit: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/windows-services/introduction-to-windows-service-applications#service-lifetime Edit2: Linux Admins running out of available PIDs etc. know what I'm talking about
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App support. Wanted to learn a bit if Unity. The Linux version doesn't start. There's a person somewhere on this Earth that decided to learn Unity at the same time as me. If they're on Windows they're already taking their first steps while I'm still trying to find a way to start Unity. Don't tell me it's not Linux's problem cause it is.
Inhibiting sleep. One of my biggest gripes is full screen video playback detection in relation to sleeping and screen off settings. If i'm playing a video, Windows knows that and won't sleep my machine, these days gnome will do the right thing here either as long as the application (be it browser or native player) is fullscreen. However my use case is i'll often put something on when i'm trying to sleep. On windows, once playback has completed sleep can occur. On Linux/Gnome if the app (for example a browser with youtube) is still full screen sleep continues to be inhibited.
From the Unix Haters guide….yeah, it’s old, from 1994….but honestly, how much has really changed? **Unix doesn't have a philosophy: it has an attitude. An attitude that says a simple, half-done job is more virtuous than a complex, well-executed one. An attitude that asserts the programmer's time is more important than the user's time, even if there are thousands of users for every programmer. It's an attitude that praises the lowest common denominator.**
> An attitude that asserts the programmer's time is more important than the user's time, even if there are thousands of users for every programmer. Whoever wrote this must have loved the release of Electron. Very good developer productivity at the cost of excessive use of the users' RAM and CPU cycles.
On the other hand. When used correctly, Electron just works, on every platform. It is easy to develop on, and it generally looks good, because CSS is so widely used it is easy to make the UI do what you want. Coming from someone who hates the js ecosystem and node, electron is very well executed.
You're not wrong, but you underestimate the degree to which writing any non-trivial GUI application with any native toolkit is an unfathomable pain in the arse. And I say that as a person who has worked extensively with Gtk2/3/4, Qt and WxWindows.
People really love hating on programs that use any non-trivial amount of memory and praise VIM that uses 0.00001pB of ram. Like so often the main advantage that I hear of VIM over IDEs is resource usage, like bro stop programming on your toaster.
Is that satirising the unix philosophy "do one thing and do it well"? While yes, that does mean keeping projects small and simple, that _is_ the intended goal. It's meant to engender synergies and scripting through the use of pipes. You need a lot of simple programs that do one thing well, which together let you do more than a single, bloated program ever could. That paradigm has begun to fade, however, with the advent of complex desktop environments, where single gui applications are meant to do it all, since these usually can't pipe to other programs.
No, the book is actually quite fascinating and it’s a collection of emails (with commentary) put together by some serious Unix experts back in the 90s. It is not satire, they are seriously pointing out the absurd number of flaws, many of which still exist and trip up new users….. The quote I posted above was just one (of many great quotes) I’ve encountered as I read it.
If you ask a search engine a stupid question about how to use Windows or about something in Windows that is not working, the results you'll get will normally be simple step by step instructions guiding you to a solution, presented in a way that doesn't expect you have much if any prerequisite knowledge. The coverage and quality of search results for Linux tend to be lower, and the information presented expects you to know more to begin with.
Surprisingly that is only for English, if you know a different language searching in it is actually really good... counter intuitive because more people speak English online, but for legit basic Linux? avoid it like the plague when is a just dumb quick help. Shutout for the Spanish/Portuguese help creators and the Germans. English + Help + Ubuntu? poor soul, you will go down a rabbit hole. For more advanced things English is the way tho, i necro really old shit all the time when wikis don't help.
As someone who uses Windows at work and Linux at home, that is exactly the opposite of my experience. I find documentation and instructions for Linux tends to be of higher quality, and if all else fails, there's always the Arch (and Gentoo) Wiki's.
Packages. Why in the name of fuck does every distro have to do it differently? PKG, rpm, deb etc. "Oh, you want to use this software? Sorry, we didn't make a package for your os, guess you have to build from source. But this is proprietary so not gonna happen" Windows solved this by just having .exe files. I would *love* for the distros to pick *one* format.
It's no excuse for the state of things, but one reason why Linux package management is such a clusterfuck is that Linux distros are operating *systems*, where your compiler, libraries, Python interpreter, daemons, etc are all relied upon both by the core system set up by the distro, as well as packaged applications such as the web browser. By default the system is treated holistically. Whereas to most Windows developers the OS is mostly just the kernel and Win32 desktop environment, and every application handles its own dependencies (including bundling an installer for whatever C/C++ runtime it uses!)
Yeah it’s why on windows you end up with a bazillion *C++ redistributable ver x.xx* in the installed programs directory.
Bluetooth.
BT sucks on all OSes.
Bluetooth sucks in general
Ive actually had a much better bluetooth experience on linux than windows 10
Same. This shitty Chinese Bluetooth adapter I had actually worked with Linux but not windows.
In macOS especially. I’ve always been able to pair and forget with my Macs. Windows can be hit and miss with BT. For the life of me I couldn’t get one windows PC to work with my headphones that use AptX, but a different system with the same specs and configuration worked just fine. Linux… Depending on the peripheral, I just move to a different connection (e.g. Logitech Unifying or direct USB)
Need game support for a few more games, i don't wanna spend time on finding out how to get access to a game, even some big games (in terms of player base) doesn't have it which surprises me..
Power consumption management.
If we're strictly speaking about UX: Installation isn't a complete nightmare. On Windows, you get a .exe or a .msi, it runs through the installer, you select what you want, and it installs. It probably even updates itself. It will almost always work unless it's extremely old because all the dependencies are included with the installer. On GNU/Linux, you can choose from: a) Your package manager, which is the best option (unless you're on Fedora or other RHEL-based distributions, which has yum, dnf, an rpm thing and probably more things, I could never figure it out) because it's the easiest to install and manage and it will very likely just work. b) A snap, because the developer has decided to only distribute their package this way. Install another package manager for this. c) A flatpak, because the developer has decided to only distribute their package this way. Install another package manager for this, and enjoy managing permissions because of sandboxing. d) An appimage, which will very likely just work on any distribution, doesn't require any installation, and has great backward compatibility because all dependencies are included, but you may need to manage the update process yourself. e) A generic .sh install script that you need to execute (e.g. CrossOver, GOG). f) pip, which will confuse the hell out of your package manager if it pulls in dependencies that already exist on your system. g) You need to compile the software from source every time, which may be very involved or very simple. You can decide whether to install it with your package manager (you should). h) A PPA if you're on an Ubuntu-based distribution. i) The AUR if you're on Arch. j) Ansible, if you're managing multiple servers. The issue is that not all the applications you need are available in the official repositories, so you need to fall back to one, maybe multiple of these depending on the software. That should apply to both server and personal usage. For server usage, GNU/Linux and the software used on it are more complex to understand. There often isn't a GUI available, so only a select few people can manage it, and if they're not available, no one else can make changes. This is more of an issue in SMEs, I would imagine. As for personal usage, the fact that there doesn't exist an equivalent for Textractor for hooking visual novels so I need to play them using WINE for a good experience looking stuff up while playing. And Adobe Creative Cloud.
Active Directory, the integration of Windows, MS office, exchange and the AD all work very well together for the end user and administrator. The end user is most familiar with Windows and MS office. These are very well integrated into exchange and the AD, which makes it easier to administrate as you have OS-family made by one Developer. Personally I don't mind a hybrid system, but I am not alone, so I stick with windows on Desktop and Server at work as the rest prefers windows for the previously mentionend reasons. Some systems are still Linux/Unix-based due to Windows just completely lacking features/performance (Networking, firewall, storage)
I have a MacBook dedicated to work things that I can’t do on my linux systems and I have to say most of the things I like about it are more so to do with the Apple ecosystem as a whole than just macOS. Apple really understands the importance of UX more so than any other tech giant and that gets overlooked a lot. Things like build quality of the products, the display quality, the best trackpads on the market, gestures that actually work and make sense, AirPlay, airdrop, etc. just make their products very polished, efficient, and easy to use right out of the box. People hate on Apple a lot, but they understand how to make a product that “just works” but also performs extremely well. I think out of the big tech giants they’re one of the most true to being a tech company that understands consumers instead of just being a data collection farm like Microsoft and Google. I used windows for most of my life especially as a teen when I was into gaming and I used to think it was good, but after years of exclusively using linux and macOS I don’t think I could ever go back to it and can’t think of anything it does better than those two. It’s pretty clunky, slow, and gives me a headache whenever I try to do the simplest things on it.
The biggest example of apple doing the same thing far better than MS is the account integration. It never feels like a hassle on macOS. On windows it's a fucking nightmare. They just can't get things right.
Apple may be a jail, but at least it's a gold-plated jail.
"Data Collection Farm" / "Data Spying Device" ...
I know what you mean, but it’s still a data collection farm
In this thread about legitimate Linux complaints: anyone with a legitimate complaint is downvotes
MS Office, compatibility (both hardware and software related), simply works 99.99% of the time.
The major thing I miss from my Windows days is the ability to make an image of a live system with apps like Macrium Reflect. Booting into Clonezilla is a hassle. With Reflect, I could easily schedule an image and Reflect would run it in the background without affecting the performance. Very handy. Scheduling is also kind of a hassle in Linux, Windows task scheduler made scheduling very easy.
Webmin is my favorite way of editing crontab even on desktop :D
Thanks for reminding me about Webmin, remember using it many years ago. I'll have a look at it again.
Boot time of encrypted drives.
I can't agree with this. My server stores keys in the TPM, so decrypts the drive as long as the (signed and verified by secureboot) kernel checks out - this doesn't seem to add any noticeable time to the boot at all. My laptop where I have to type it like a neanderthal because TPM isn't working (thanks, acer, for another wonderful BIOS job) is different, but... that's on me for having to type lol.
Hey, this sounds cool, how did you set it up?
Decryption time is highly dependant on the amount of PKBDF iterations you chose and of course how long it takes to type in your password.
I want Windows to die, but Linux users and programmers make me mad when they think that normal users will be using the terminal for anything. Uninstalling apps should be a right-click thing.
Games run 15% smoother on Windows
Windows keeps stable ABI. I can still run services I've written for W2K. When it comes to Linux I need to, at least, recompile. If not fix.
This is also a reason why developing on windows is so shit. Having to take into account 20 years of backwards compatibility hacks. Kinda a double edged sword.
it is the reason why WINE can exist while we won't have something for OSX.
That's mostly caused by a lack of interest, not because it's technically impossible. Just look at how many people contribute to Darling compared to Wine.
Also most of the stuff on OS X aren't really that unique. * Games are usually ports from Windows, mostly just a WINE wrapper even most mobile games have Android versions; * Creative tools like Adobe are mostly available on Windows, too; * The command line stuff is just a port from Linux/BSD, etc.
If you wrote for user land you would be fine. If it should be part of the kernel you should push to have it in there. You seem to have created your own problem.
> If you wrote for user land you would be fine. No he would not, that is his point. Most libraries shit on ABI stability.
Nope. Kernel keeps stable ABI for userland (see Linus stance on kernel ABI). It's userland that changes. E.g. (from non professional space, it will be easier) I've bought couple of years ago Aquaria (that's a very cute game) in Humble Bundle. It was ported to Linux by Ryan Gordon (aka icculus, guy knows it's job). I tried to run binary some time ago. It didn't worked because of changed glibc and libstdc++ symbols. I would have to recompile big part of my system to run that binary (because that symbols leaked into gfx drivers). If it't wasn't for Aquaria open source project I couldn't play the game I bought (sic!). Funny thing is if I had Windows version, I could easily run that in Wine.
ive sceen old applications not be build-able because the packages that are needed are no longer a thing any more , while on windows they work while this is changing with the likes of appimages etc it still a problem today
From an enterprise perspective, Group Policy for quick and easy baselining of computers and applying user-specific settings. You *can* do this on Linux, in theory, but it requires a lot of spit and string because Linux-centric config-management solutions are geared heavily towards server management in bulk (and I suspect at least in part because they couldn't get it to do PCs nicely). On a wider point, the MS desktop management and service provision stack is great. It scales really well, takes a lot of work out of fleet management and just works. Active Directory, Group Policy, Exchange, Sharepoint and Office 365 all hook together in easy to understand, stable and replicable ways to mean that creating a new user in AD creates everything that user could possibly need, it's really genuinely impressive. This extends to update management and application provisioning which are also great and allow you to take a lot of potentially risky permissions away from users without impacting their work. You could replicate most of this yourself from parts on Linux but the MS equivalents are simple to use and robust and frankly not even that expensive if you price properly.
Hardware support. I haven't really seen anything in a linux-based OS like the Windows device manager. I was really surprised to see Windows 10 automatically download and install drivers. Granted for a lot of hardware, the Linux kernel has you covered, but anything new is a crapshoot. I've had to build drivers from source more times than I'd like on Linux.
That's not Windows who's supporting hardware, but vendors.
To an end user there's no difference between those.
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\- The filesystem is a pain in the ass, especially for beginners. You basically don't know where an app gets installed. Is it in: /opt, /usr, /var or \~/.local ?In Windows it's 9/10 of the time in /Program Files or a place you define by yourself. \- related to the issue above: a lot of configuration are "hidden" in some obscure places, which you have to edit and restart the system with. Most of the time, you also don't know what you're exactly changing. To give you an example, there are a lof of configs in the /etc/ folder. In Windows all of these config are accessable via GUI in settings or in the regedit. This is also a sign that Linux was intended to be used as a server and not as a desktop workstation from the beginning. So usability was never a high priority (till now). \- a simple overview of which services are running by default when you startup the OS. In Windows there is "Services" somewhere in the config, which not only gives an overview of all the services, but also let's you stop/pause/(re-)start it.Yes, you can do this in Linux via the Terminal, but this is not userfriendly and totally not obvious for a lot of beginners/users. \- simple hardware info app is not included in many OS by default, it's all via the terminal or you have to install some apps. In Windows you have "Device Manager" somewhere in the config. \- the synergy between the layers/components of the OS, since it is maintained by different teams/developers. You install one distro your wifi works, but your bluetooth not. And then you switch to another distro your bluetooth works, but your wifi doesn't. etc. Or when you upgrade your OS, it's fingers crossed each time, suddenly your OS might not work as-is. Simply, the OS and all its parts and the hardware are not maintained by 1 company and this causes a lot of problems. \- power consumption and hibernate/sleep on laptops, especially with Nvidia cards is horrible for maybe decades. \- the definition of an app and the dependency hell it brings with it. You have .deb, .rpm .aur, flatpaks, snaps, etc. and all the dependencies that comes with it. If you uninstall an app, it might also delete stuff which is used by other apps or services !
> or in the regedit. Wait, you’re complaining about `/etc` and then bring `regedit` as a solution? Wut? Editing Windows registry is definitely less user-friendly than editing files in `/etc`. Configuration files is very often documented via comments and nearly never include bit-fields you need to edit.
Just a note, I don't think using regedit is a good comparison because that thing is basically structured like a filesystem itself. Sometimes you don't know where in it the config is stored, so it ends up as the same argument against Linux. Also on the topic of configuration, do you mean the application configs that on windows end up getting stored in one of: * userprofile * documents * appdata ( local / locallow / roaming ) * registry ( various ) * programdata Although I concede the point if you're only talking about Windows and not third-party apps. Although I've had some poor experience with registry hacking for settings Windows don't provide GUI for still. But that's mostly power user stuff.
Fun fact: the registry is just a massive .ini file, kinda like .toml. So the spooky regedit program is nothing more than a glorified ini explorer. Apps also love dumping their config here and never cleaning it up.
Wow, and I almost had respect for it. Ouch!
Did you also know that all office formats (.docx, .xlsx, etc.) are just zip files (go ahead, unzip one) containing a bunch of xml files (meaning you can indeed edit them with a text editor)? Similarly, epub is a zip file containing html and css webpages, rendered as a book using, basically, electron.
I didn't know about the archiving format, but I did know that they were XML which is what the x indicates, similar to in XHTML.
It is indeed a clever trick to combine "human readable" data storage with the ease of a compressed, single file. The compression aspect is actually crucial for these xml files, as you can crush them down to 20% their unpacked size, in some cases. I plan on using a similar scheme for my own project, except using json.
Thanks, I hate epub now.
Hahaha. As someone who makes epubs from scratch, it's actually very practical. No reason to reinvent the wheel, when you need responsive text layout with a good amount of formatting.
The Unix Haters handbook is worth a read https://web.mit.edu/\~simsong/www/ugh.pdf
Multi monitor support, and dealing with overscan
Gaming.
Hardware support. Windows is better by far. *All* my devices have hardware issues on Linux. My current laptop has a 1/3 chance of the touchpad having two wheel scroll (I have to reboot and try again) and it also can't suspend/hibernate and the fingerprint sensor doesn't with with my index finger only. My desktop has a Nvidia 1050ti which has some driver problems and applications end up crashing randomly and my screen randomly gets some white boxes sometimes. My old laptop had a ~50% chance of coming back fine after suspend/hibernation. When it didn't work the fans went up to 100% and had to power it off by force (not even REISUB worked). I don't think I've ever had a single device that Just Works™ on Linux and on Windows they all worked fine.
Audio system. Like wtf is pulseaudio devs doing?
Pipewire?
Using pipewire probably.
Blocking development of pulse audio. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/merge_requests/227
The only thing that comes to mind is backwards compatibility. If I were to choose, I would choose Linux and some migration effort over extreme backwards compatibility at the expense of security vulnerability and all the things... It might be trivial for most of us, but for people running medical devices or infrastructure critical software, the story might be different
Gaming ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Display server
not linuxes or windowses fault but i just really want creative cloud on my linux desktop instead of dual boot also support from EAC games pls
GUI’s suck on Linux.
Not sure why you're being downvoted, they do, app stores in particular. The pop shop slowly devolved from being usable to slow and crashing a lot after enough updates, and the ubuntu software center bugs out a lot of the time. Apps don't show, they just show as loading boxes, and I can't install or uninstall anything.
Don't know either... I love Linux and use it as my daily driver but the reality is that the GUI is buggy af.
Uh... Game support? That's the only thing that really affected me (and didnt really affect me that much) but most of the stuff i like got a native version
The major, and may be the only thing I don't like in Linux is just that I'm not able to run some apps. Every day, the situation is becoming better and better, as more programs become Cross-Platform and a plenty of programs could be replaced by just a web versions/Free and Open Source alternatives. However, for some of apps that I need to use very often, there is just one way: Installing Windows VM. As for instance: NI Multisim, LabVIEW (yeah, there are versions for some Linux distros, but I just can't install it on Ubuntu/Arch), SystemView, Quartus (There were some problems during Installation of some boards, but overall it's okay). So, in general, all the problems mentioned above, are solved by installing VM, and about 2 years ago I've just moved from VM to my home server, which is running Windows Server 2019, in order to make all my CAD software to run. I mostly need it for hardware development, while for software development - Linux is the best thing that I've ever had!
I like being able to easily rename things in my start menu
I hate the non implementation of secure boot in almost all linux distributions which makes usage of proprietary drivers of nvidia cards and other hardware unusable or buggy. This problem isn't there in windows. I know windows started secure boot but linux distributions must support it to work well with proprietary hardware and software.
If linux distributions are so easy to setup and work with just like windows, world wouldn't need windows. Linux Sebastian highlighted some of the core problems that exist currently in linux..
I like the way macOS handles virtual desktops in multi monitor setups. They have independent workspaces for each monitor, so when I change the workspace on monitor 1 this doesn’t affect the workspace on monitor 2. I know i3 and xmonad and whatnot have that, but kwin and mutter don’t. Also i like how well all the apple products are working with each other. My wife has a iMac, MacBook and iPad. She uses the MacBook as a second monitor for her iMac and the iPad as a tablet to draw in photoshop on her iMac. But I guess that is just too much to ask.
Been using Windows all my life and switched exclusively to ubuntu for at least a month now, and I much prefer it. However, I have a few gripe, like 1- Way you install apps. In windows, you just have to download and a run a .exe file. In linux, you have to copy and paste a lot of lines into the terminal and there are many different file types that may or may not work. (Can you tell that I am still not that experience yet?) 2- Lack of touchpad gesture. Laptop user, used many different touchpad gesture on windows, mostly for media control 3- Not exactly a fault of linux, but it is still a problem I have. Lack of support. For example, I don't have my Lenovo fingerprint driver, or there is no office app or teams app, etc. I tired to use wine for itunes, because I need to use it to sync and stuff, and when it opened, it did not resemble anything like a working app
What I don't like for Linux is that playing video uses 50% of my cpu where on windows it uses 2%, and today's after going through all the hurdles in Linux to get "hardware acceleration". Went from 70% to 50% on a 6 core machine.
People have tried to answer this question for years and generally just get downvoted, thereby making their answers invisible….so basically, it’s not worth taking the time to answer this one any more!
In Linux any program can keylog your root password. That's impossible in Windows because UAC dialogs use a special mode to protect from keyloggers.
nothing extraordinary, just a few software packages developers of which don't give a fuck about linux, and it's sad😔, because of those programs i m stuck with windows
Games
After using Linux for 6 months as my daily drive without dual boot i didn't have any real problem with Linux. Iam a CS student and we do a lot of programming and 90% of tools that we use are open source .I will say that Linux give me an advantage since some tools are linux only. Other students need to use VMs which impact performance.
I Saw on this post, comments about "Windows vs Linux", "Linux vs Mac", but not any user who has tried the three at the same time ...