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Comment by GekkePrutser | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree. KDE in particular feels more well rounded than ever before. I use it on FreeBSD but I use Linux on servers and I'm also very happy with that.

Windows 10 is stable for me too though I was hit with the eTPM stutter bug (I use my Windows box exclusively for gaming, in particular VR which I didn't feel like figuring out in proton). But the windows dark patterns are surely there and I hate them. But as it's only my gaming machine I can deal with it.

And Mac... Well I moved away from it because Apple is locking down too much and I've come to hate opinionated software. Still they seem to be doing nice things with M1..

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I recently got Apex Legends working and it's running perfectly at 144 fps in 2k on a 1080 ti.

I've also played FFXIV and Path of Exile extensively in Linux.

The only thing left is Adobe products which is honestly a matter of time. Just really takes hammering out some market share until Adobe relents.

A lot of the best kernel, driver, and gui shell improvements have only really hit their stride in the past 24 months.

Things are coming together rapidly.

> A lot of the best kernel, driver, and gui shell improvements have only really hit their stride in the past 24 months.

Could you elaborate on that?

I've been using desktop Linux almost exclusively for the past 24 years (ouch!), and recent years seem pretty average to me. Things work great, most of the time, like always.

Unless you're talking about gaming. I'm not a gamer (or i wouldn't be such a long time Linux user) but I hear there's enormous progress on that front.

Gaming was what held me back from switching for decades. Steam is doing a great job on that front, most recent (like in max 5 years old) games in my library work like a charm under Ubuntu. And that includes all AAA games. Old games are harder as those are, understandably, not on top of the priority list to convert to Linux. For those, and some rarely used other stuff I haven't bothered to figure out Linux alternatives for, I still use Windows.

If Linux based gaming continues on the current trajectory, I could imagine a world in which a great chunk of the consumer market switches from Windows to Linux.

KDE on FreeBSD and Linux on servers seems an interesting choice, what was it that brought you to FreeBSD on desktop if you were using Linux on server?

Mainly that I like the concept of FreeBSD. It's just one OS, has excellent documentation. Some good tech like jails, zfs on root etc.

Apparently it's not great at WiFi but I don't use that on my main driver (NUC).

On Linux I use docker a lot, and while FreeBSD has its excellent jails, it doesn't have the whole ecosystem around them. So that's why I use Linux on the server side more.

I don't even use a desktop environment. Gonna be using a window manager for ever. Most of everything is run on the command line anyway.

How do you browse the Internet then?

You can use normal applications in a window manager. Window manager ≠ terminal

you can start programs with just X. i use simple WMs but have put kodi in its own dedicated session. its kind of like kiosk mode.

Lynx? Lynx still works for a lot of sites I frequent.

Seamonkey, Firefox, etc. You do not need a desktop environment to run a webbrowser.

> How do you browse the Internet then?

I assume by

> using a window manager for ever

I've used WindowMaker as a Window manager for decades. Only recently did I decide to switch to Mate because I wanted a taskbar at the bottom with useful things like applets to show and switch Wifi/network, volume control and often-used icons/launchers.

TBH, if I could get things like tint2 and yabar working with the mate applets, I'd probably switch back to WindowMaker in a heartbeat.

use Fluxbox, you could set some applets with standalone software.

Pnmixer for Pulseaudio, NM-applet/connman...

FWIW: most systray applets work with any of WindowMaker's dockapp systrays, and there are a few dockapps (wmappl, wmbutton) that allow you a slightly more compact often-used icons/launcher thing. Mate panel applets do need the Mate panel of course but you can generally find equivalents for just about anything.

I don't run Linux anymore (not natively, for everyday use, in any case) -- like most people in this thread I also think the desktop is a shitshow these days but it's a particularly bad shitshow in Linux, and I was using Linux in 2003 so I know what a shitshow looks like. But when I do still need to touch a Linux machine, WindowMaker is still my WM of choice. It's really good.

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