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Comment by jaimex2 | Hacker News Reader

Linux desktops are nicer period.

Both OSX and Windows feel like an archaic mess when you go back to them.

How are system restarts still a thing?!

I've had trouble with sound, wireless (both wifi and bluetooth), graphics, boot, and power-state management with Linux, with at least one of these issues appearing in every single device I've installed Linux on, with none of those appearing on the Windows devices that I've also used.

I also have experienced performance, usability, and integration problems with every Linux desktop environment that I've used.

Linux desktops are certainly not "nicer period". They're better than Windows and macOS along certain axes (e.g. transparency and modularity of internals) and worse along others.

> I've had trouble with sound, wireless (both wifi and bluetooth), graphics, boot, and power-state management with Linux,

Hah! I could say the same for Windows! I'm the family IT support person and I've experienced all those problems and a whole lot more in Windows. Especially after Windows upgrades (e.g. going from Windows 7 to 10 or 10 to 11).

At least with Linux there's always a way to fix it. It might be in some obscure StackOverflow post or the Ubuntu forums or the Arch wiki (which is fantastic BTW) but there's always a solution.

With Windows there often isn't a solution other than, "wait for the vendor to fix it." There's not even good troubleshooting options in Windows because the built-in logger is the worst in all of the history of computing and I don't know how anyone can put up with it!

There isn’t always a solution on Linux. I’ve hit a few things over the years where I’ve hit a wall and got stuck. On two occasions I fixed it myself and submitted patches and got entirely ignored. The bot closing your ancient PR that the maintainer of a large open source project didn’t even bother looking at is the status quo in my existence.

Now I acknowledge that I’m helpless on any platform.

In 10 years, there's nothing I've run into that a kernel update didnt fix.

Every time I hang up a phone or video call on my bluetooth headphones, Apple Music opens on my mac and starts playing House Of The Rising Sun. I’ve just come to accept this now because there really is no way to stop it.

I expect that at some point in the future Asahi linux will be mature enough and someone will have finally figured out how to support the trackpad properly so we really can enjoy Linux on Apple’s incredible hardware.

Then I’ll have some kind of awakening where I realise it’s not normal for The Animals to play an outro to every meeting, and well… it’ll be goodbye macos my old friend of 20 years.

Thank you for corroborating this, every time I bring it up on HN people ignore it like it's a non-issue. My headphones should not be a shortcut for launching Apple Music; that is a terrible default setting.

> someone will have finally figured out how to support the trackpad properly

We're there, if you use Wayland. In Firefox I have pinch-to-zoom, forward/backwards swipe shortcuts and KDE has 1:1 desktop navigation gestures. I'm using a wired Magic Trackpad, but I'm sure the behavior is the same on all of Apple's trackpads. Give it a whirl this weekend, if you've got the stuff lying around!

I've been quite enjoying macOS. It's a different paradigm for sure, but as I get more fluent in it I find I enjoy it almost as much as my linux desktop. Windows still feels like I'm waging war against Microsoft for control of my computer, though.

It's frustrating how easily Microsoft is annoying users purely because they have to have every single pixel monetized on Windows. So much user frustration comes down to this. A potentially useful widget feature if it was open to Windows app developers first, is just another avenue to throw MSN News and ads at you, becoming yet another thing to fight your computer about.

They’re still a thing on Linux, I have to restart with every kernel update.

Do you mean like the "system restart required - in 60s" style of the other OSes, or just in order to boot with the newly-installed kernel? The only you-must-reboot-now-no-choice thing I can think of any of my Linux desktops is nvidia driver updates, I guess because you're living on borrowed time without a reboot...

Not only that, unlike Windows TPM + Secure Boot still requires lots of manual shenanigans on every kernel update (at least on Fedora).

It was designed that way, but it doesn’t actually need to be that way.

KSplice, for example, lets you update the kernel without rebooting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksplice

> does not provide any mechanisms for ensuring function-level consistency while the hot patches are applied

E.g. a shotgun pointed at your feet

To be fair, the comparison is against the way Windows updates itself which is like Russian roulette.

You are talking about unbootable system (extremely rare) or missing drivers. But what I quoted potentially means data corruption.

Windows doesn't support changing the volume by scrolling when having the mouse on the speaker tray icon.

I miss that so much when I'm on windows and not on KDE.

install Eartrumpet to get that, and other useful features.

I am on Windows 11 right now and it most definitely does work.

And 10, both "new" scroll panel and the old mixer one.

It's all the little conveniences like that in desktop oriented Linux-based operating systems (which directly correspond to opposing "paper-cuts" in Windows and often MacOS) which have kept me on Linux for a couple few decades now (last Windows I used regularly was Windows 7). It was rough going at first, as Linux distros weren't nearly as "polished" back then as they mostly are now, but it was worth it because Linux simply kept improving in every little detail that mattered to me. Every time I'm forced to touch Windows these days, it's positively painful trying to navigate even the most basic functions.

You don't ever restart your Linux system even after kernel and driver upgrades? That's the only time I usually have to reboot windows.

Branding alone gets me. Booting up MacOS or Windows just feels wrong, nevermind the time I spend uninstalling their bloatware or disabling the ads. A fresh Linux system is unparalleled zen, as long as you coughed up the money for a properly supported machine.

> A fresh Linux system is unparalleled zen, as long as you coughed up the money for a properly supported machine.

In before, “Yeah, we’ll, I just don’t use that feature so it doesn’t bother me.”

In response to what? All three operating systems here have things they are uniquely capable of, and uniquely incapable of. The stones are all in glass houses, I dare someone to throw the first one.

This is a really weak retort. Only with linux is buying hardware a minefield where it's common to blame the purchaser for "not doing the research" or knowing what chipset(!) is in some piece of consumer hardware. Meanwhile, this problem simply doesn't exist on the two main desktop competitors.

It's been this way for 30 years.

And yes, this counts for "fully supported" hardware.

Is the whole suspend/hibernate ("Modern Standby") clusterfuck not real enough of an issue for you? Seems like that fits pretty well into the category of problem you're describing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28639952

Let's see: in the last couple of years, my Linux laptops have made me... spend a few minutes googling for how to get systemd to leave dhcp-provided dns servers alone, and one time where I couldn't get a serial driver to install cleanly. Meanwhile, my (work) Windows laptops have tried to burn down my house.

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