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Comment by ThePhysicist | Hacker News Reader

Linux might suck sometimes, but IMHO it sucks much less than Windows (MacOS I can't say because I never really used it). I'm running Kubuntu 20.04 right now on a Thinkpad T490, and everything except the fingerprint sensor (which I never use anyway) just works out of the box. I find the UI looks absolutely great and more polished than Windows 10, everything is really snappy and responsive and there are a ton of great open-source productivity apps I can choose from (Krita, Dolphin, Konsole, ...). I'm still blown away of how good an operating system can be that is being developed mostly by volunteers without any central authority. 10 years ago Windows might have been on top of desktop Linux, but the progress that window managers like Gnome and KDE have made since then is significant, while Windows seems to be stuck in 2010 design-wise.

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> I'm still blown away of how good an operating system can be that is being developed mostly by volunteers without any central authority.

Linux is mostly developed by paid developers these days.

> https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/10/28/who-contributes-to-the-...

The Kernel is one big chunk of many to make up a distro

Only the kernel is mostly developed by paid developers.

Linux on the Desktop has always volunteer-driven.

I think KDE used to have like 15-ish paid developers at its peak and nowadays it even fewer.

I found this comment really interesting, thanks for sharing.

I guess I could say I'm a power user (long time LAMP stack dev), but I've never gotten my hands dirty with other distros / Desktop Environments other than vanilla Ubuntu.

I recently upgraded my PC which now has a decent Nvidia GPU (2070) along with an i7 and 32Gb of pretty decent ram - and yet I'm finding my Ubuntu experience (18.04) isn't particularly responsive.

The lag is especially noticeable whilst I'm on a Zoom team meeting and I change windows or adjust window sizes.

I'm now wondering whether I should give Kubuntu a try?

I have installed KDE on Ubuntu, and it feels much more responsive.

Are you using the proprietary nvidia drives? The nouveau (ope source) drives are not great.

Heya, thanks for asking - I'm not sure to be honest.

I just checked my installation notes - and I ran the following when setting up the new rig:

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

Not sure if that answers your question?

I don't think this is related to the NVIDIA drivers, personally I just use the integrated Intel graphics on Linux as I don't need 3D acceleration and as the NVIDIA card drains the battery quite fast.

As others have said try installing the proprietary driver, maybe that'll fix it. I'm a KDE user since several years though so I don't have much experience with Gnome, I switched to KDE because it had (has?) better support for fractional scaling, which I direly need to make a multi-monitor High DPI setup usable.

Why are you running such an old distro version on new hardware?

Yeah you're totally right.

Back in the 90s / 2000s I only needed to upgrade my OS every 4 to 5 years or so - and I guess that attitude kinda stuck (in that I didn't consider Ubuntu 18.04 to be all that old - and I figured that it being an LTS version would cover my newer hardware).

Anyway I take your point - I think it's time to upgrade to 20.04 :)

No offence to anyone who’s in support of it, but Gnome has never been the “quick and responsive” choice. They choose to focus more on helping users make connections between input and effect (Click minimize, see an animation of the window minimizing to it’s final position), same goal as OSX.

There are dozens of window managers who’s focus is on responsiveness (Xfce jumps to mind) if you want to explore that side of it.

> No offence to anyone who’s in support of it, but Gnome has never been the “quick and responsive” choice.

I always used other desktop environments like LXDE / LXQT. The speed difference you mention was one of the reasons. But now my HDMI port only works under Wayland. So now I use Gnome3 (under sufferance).

The difference between speed difference between Wayland and X11 is so big, it blows away the speed improvement LXQT gets you, so Gnome3 is actually faster than the rest now. I presume that will change when more Desktop environments move to Wayland, but for now that's the reality.

Interesting take.

I haven't spent enough time in Gnome or KDE to really know.

What things/features do you enjoy about them, that are missing from windows 10?

Hard to say, as a power user I of course enjoy having all the great tooling below the surface, like a proper shell and the ability to easily run all kinds of services like databases. Having a package manager like apt is also great, as most software can be installed/uninstalled/upgraded with a single command.

Regarding the UI: The KDE UI is just very discreet and doesn't get in the way, and there are a ton of small productivity features that are really handy (multiple workspaces, mouse and keyboard gestures, widgets, highly configurable panels, different themes etc.). Windows feels quite limited and slow in comparison (I also run it on the laptop for things like gaming and Powerpoint), sometimes e.g. the explorer will take several seconds to open and the UI can be sluggish without reason. I think Windows 10 was really innovative and great when it came out, it didn't improve much since then IMHO. On the other hand, Linux WMs like KDE or Gnome constantly evolve and get better since they are not governed by a central authority that needs to worry about commercial interests.

I've been using windows, Macos and KDE extensively.

I by far prefer KDE.

I think things work pretty much as well on Linux/KDE as they do on Mac/win. The apple mantra "it just works" is just not true.

With Linux/KDE I get extensibility and can make the platform streamlined to my use cases. That said, it's not perfect, but the amount of wtf/day is less on Linux for me.

One simple example is the file dialog that is a disaster in gnome and Macos. Windows so so, KDE it's good.

The goal to simplify things for end users that runs deep on Macos and gnome I think makes things more unusable than simple and clear.

The quick navigation between windows is another example where I really don't understand how people can work efficiently on Mac. On Linux I can easily jump between windows, have virtual desktops with organised applications. On vanilla Mac you have cumbersome keyboard navigation and have to switch to one app before you can switch to the right window of that app.

I'll stop ranting now.

> I'll stop ranting now.

If you can just rant for a little longer, I'll be eternally grateful. Rant Topic: how to get KDE to run under Wayland on Debian Bullseye.

KDE on Wayland is shipping in Bullseye now. But Debian's old system of choosing a window manager, /etc/alternatives, only appears to work for X. No clues under /usr/share/doc, no one on IRC #debian has a clue either, and I'm right out of ideas.

Sadly my HDMI port works only on Wayland, not X. So unless I can get KDE working, it's Gnome3 for me. Gnome3's titlebar and I aren't compatible.

Both: Performance.

Java compiles in 30% shorter time.

Probably also true for .Net but I haven't checked.

Running smaller apps is also noticeably quicker on Linux.

Once I benchmarked a hello world .Net app on both a new Windows and in a VirtualBox VM on the same machine. The difference is in the 10x or 100x range.

This is especially obvious when working with anything that uses git. On Linux it happens as you lift your hand from enter.

On Windows you can wait a couple of seconds.

Compared to Gnome, I feel KDE treats me like an adult. Gnome wants to tell me how things are supposed to be. In KDE everything is configurable (so use something with sane defaults like KDE Neon).

Same here. Love it!

Switched the missus as well. Since it easier to have a homogenous set of machines.

She's as non-technical as they come. But browsers work the same. So she hardly noticed. Most modern casual usage is on the web anyways.

And for advanced things I haven't yet found a thing I couldn't easily do.

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