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Comment by kuro68k | Hacker News Reader

This. I tried every major Linux distro recently, and every one had really basic problems. For example, Ubuntu and Mint don't let you configure the mouse wheel scroll speed. There are hacks but none work reliably. Do all Ubuntu users really scroll web pages incredibly slowly?

And then there are the missing apps. Want a really good, free git GUI client? Sorry, not on Linux. It's git FFS, Linux should have great dev tools. Same with file managers.

I used to be an Amiga user, I'm a C developer and like tinkering. But I also want something that just works for the basics. Sad to say but Windows, for all its faults, does work. Visual Studio does work. And all the open source apps I use like Kicad are on Windows.

I really want to move to Linux, but it's too much work to make it work. These days I have better things to do with my computer.

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> For example, Ubuntu and Mint don't let you configure the mouse wheel scroll speed.

Since both are Debian derivatives, I imagine that both include synclient(1). No, it's not a GUI — but that's better, because you can just put the right command into your login scripts, and you know that it'll execute, and never get deleted because a desktop environment decided to change its config file format.

> Want a really good, free git GUI client? Sorry, not on Linux.

Magit is awesome.

> Sad to say but Windows, for all its faults, does work.

I have a couple of Windows machines, and I don't feel that they work. Swallowed keystrokes & clicks, ads — no thank you!

I use synclient at login now, but your paragraph about it alone has a few great reasons why a civilian might be turned off by linux on the desktop.

> because you can just put the right command into your login scripts, and you know that it'll execute, and never get deleted because a desktop environment decided to change its config file format.

You just lost 99% of the userbase.

I'm a mac convert to linux. I've switched back and forth for years. Since I started using linux in the late 90s, I have an issue where I go to paste something, and nothing is in the clipboard, so I go back and recopy, then it works.

It happens just rarely enough to make me feel insane, but it never happens on my work windows machine or my mac. Maybe I'm subconsciously sabotaging my copies on linux.

This is the most bizarre thing I encounter, but it's missing the hundred other tiny warts I ignore because I "know what I signed up for" using linux as my daily driver.

IntelliJ looks and works GREAT on Linux, though. Depending on what languages you code for, jetbrains products can actually be quite affordable too.

Same here. Clion IMO is miles ahead VS for C++ dev (when you don't need to interface with the Windows API of course)

> Want a really good, free git GUI client?

GitKraken?

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