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Comment by jk3faster | Hacker News Reader

If you are not heavily dependent on softwares that run exclusively on Windows, I would say user experience on any mainstream GNU/Linux distribution is far better than that of Windows(which still insists automatic update before a reboot/shutdown). Also, community support for linux is much better. Places like AskUbuntu and community forums of distributions are much better than microsoft's support forum. Try a distribution like Kubuntu or Linux Mint for a few weeks :)

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Linux people keep peddling this, I'd say it'll never be the year of Linux on Desktop if you keep denying you have problems. Last I tried to dual boot my Windows gaming rig to Ubuntu Desktop earlier this year, it can't even do fractional scaling on my 4K monitor, making it completely worthless. You'd think HiDPI support is pretty basic stuff in 2019. Granted Windows HiDPI is still craptastic compared to macOS, as least it has been usable since 2015.

Actually you can do this fairly easily by:

1) Learning nano/vim

2) Understanding what X window manager is and does

3) Understanding how config files work

4) Editing the appropriate config file to change DPI. Be careful not to do something wrong or you'll mess your system up

So easy my grandma could do it.

<s>Honestly can’t tell if this is sarcasm.</s> This is probably sarcasm.

If it’s not, you’re welcome to actually point out the configuration files I need to edit. I tried many “solutions”, even edited boot parameters to no avail. According to sources I read, someone without an Nvidia graphics card might have an easier time.

    xrandr --output HDMI-1 --scale 0.75x0.75 --mode 4096x2160

Play with the scale numbers and the resolution until you get the desired effect. Can't give a full tutorial here but "xrandr hdpi" should yield helpful search results.

I'm not denying it's a pain and Windows/MacOS are miles ahead, but this is how you can get by on Linux with X. I use it daily for work and media, on a variety of monitors.

Thanks for the info, will try this when I get around to it. But this sounds like scaling a low res image to fit the pixels instead of native HiDPI support, is that right? Then it will probably be blurry?

Edit: Maybe you meant using a native 2x scale paired with downscaling. Interesting, sounds promising.

Yeah it's definitely sarcasm. I love Linux but even I can't be arsed to get it to work half the time.

Of course, that's what I refer to as a windows dependent workflow, like gaming and graphics designing. And I do agree linux support for those stuff is still limited, but constantly improving(especially with Steam).

The way I see it, "desktop-dependent workflows" overlap more and more with those "Windows-dependent workflows". Nowadays, most people don't need more than a web browser, and in that sense they do just fine with a tablet or phone (where iOS and Android dominate, and GNU/Linux is not really a viable option, at least not yet), or a Chromebook (yes, it's Linux, but it's mainly just Chrome).

Most people I know with a legitimate use for a desktop also have legitimate reasons to use Windows or macOS: gaming on Windows, content creation on Windows or macOS (graphics designing, video editing, ...), and MS Office lock-in. The only exception I can think of are developers, but even then, depending on the kind of development one is doing, using Windows or macOS may be the only choice.

I'm a software developer. I mainly work web and android. That,ofcourse, I can't do it on a smartphone and my Linux distro probably does it better than Windows. Installing and configuring CLIs and other development tools are much easier on Linux. I usually just install a linux distro as dual boot to my peers rather than figuring out how to get those stuff configured right on windows. There are ofcourse things like ASP.NET that are difficult to develop on linux because Visual Studio isn't available but fortunately, I'm able to choose my stack and avoid such cases most of the time. The windows-dependent workflows doesn't mean that doing those things with Linux is impossible. An inspiring story was published here recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21504721 Where they switched from Windows/Pagemaker/Photoshop to Linux/Scribus/GIMP for the complete process of designing and publishing a commercial newspaper. For video editing, there is kdenlive, openshot and blender. GNU/Linux is definitely more than just a "web browser" OS and capable of doing most of the things that an average user does on windows.

I, too, develop for Android and, like you say, we have the "luxury" of being able to do it on both Windows and Linux (and macOS as well, if I wanted). Even .NET development is more cross-platform than ever, with .NET Core. One of my points was precisely that developers were an exception in this regard, as our tooling is generally cross-platform. You can't say the same about people who do their work primarily using Adobe tools, for example. And even developers sometimes don't have this luxury: for example, if you do iOS development, to publish on the app store, at some point you must use a Mac to sign the app. Of course you can use stuff like Xamarin and use the Mac exclusively to sign, but this is often inconvenient compared to just using the officially endorsed stack. Overall, requiring a "traditional desktop operating system" to work is less and less the case for the general population.

Using a 4K monitor in a sane way (things not small enough to the point of being unreadable or large enough to be completely in my face) is Windows dependent workflow? I never said I was dual booting for gaming.

What finally got me on Linux for good was Regolith (an Ubuntu distribution with a tiling WM preconfigured). The window manager is just better, faster, and I can use my vim shortcuts to move between windows and desktops. And, crucially for Linux, it came ready to go so I didn't have to spend days getting it working how I'd like.

Windows can do all sorts of little things on the desktop better than Linux; It may be that you simply do not use those features when you try Windows. I've had my fair share of UX troubles with desktop Linux throughout the years. Now, this would not be much of a problem if it wasn't such a headache to get things fixed in FOSS. Lack of feature ownership often means you have to commit to having certain issues that can be extremely breaking for your use case for years at a time (or be told to "fix it yourself"; hint: most Windows users aren't qualified or interested, so that's a deal breaker). Even Firefox on Windows has this problem.

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