Hacker News Reader

Comment by dharmab | Hacker News Reader

I've been using fundamentally the same Linux setup for over ten years now. I think the biggest change it went through was migrating the audio system to Pipewire, which took about an hour to figure out and hasn't need attention since.

I have no solutions to offer for smartphones sadly.

View on HN

Amazing. The mental peace you've gained this way probably vastly outweighs the initial investment and missing out on the newest "features".

My archlinux has moved from a bunch of scripts to just a window manager with Chrome. At the end of the day, you realize you don't really need all these gadgets and notifications but just a terminal and a browser.

Yup, my core applications are Kitty, Vim, coreutils, Firefox, and pcmanfm.

100%. I'm not OP but have had similar experience. My basic UX hasn't changed beyond trivialities in pretty well over 10 years. Contrast that with SaaS and many modern mobile apps that get completely redesigned every couple of years whether you want them to or not, and you have zero control on even the timing of the update. I've found a lot of refuge in open source as complete redesigns just for the hell of it (or to justify a full-time job) are nearly unheard of, but there are definitely tradeoffs. Usually (though not always!) the UX isn't great, but it will be functional. As a person who prefers function over form (though does harbor an intense appreciate for the latter), this is often a good trade.

I just wish the Linux desktop experience were better. I'm going to give Deepin a try as it is focused on desktop experience.

It's honestly pretty great on a desktop PC these days. Laptops are hit or miss depending on the model.

I'm using Ubuntu but it has a few issues. Overall it's OK because I treat it as a development machine for my side projects.

Exactly. Fedora on the desktop is wonderful, and on laptop is really good assuming reasonably supported hardware. I have a framework 16 and 13 and both run fedora really well.

SailfishOS is pretty decent on mobile, as in a simple system that moves slowly. You can get support for Android apps with an emulation layer. Even banking apps tend to work well. Sadly, to get a license from the US you'd need a EU IP address.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com