Comment by breakwaterlabs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by breakwaterlabs | Hacker News Reader

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> I dislike how it is 'developers first' and not 'users first',

There are user-centric and dev-centric Linux distros. Windows is "Microsoft cloud onboarding" centric, and the experience has been dramatically degrading for years.

If that were not the case, why would senior executives at Microsoft say things like "we've heard you" and "we intend to reverse the suck in the coming year"? Even their management knows users hate the Win11 experience, and have placed it on their backlog....

> I dislike how janky its various GUI desktop managers are...igh pixel density, different audio setups, multi-touch trackpad support

These things are objectively better on a modern KDE linux. Out of the box I can output youtube videos to a dual-Sonos / Airpod setup by... clicking the sound icon, which pulls up an interface reminescent of "Windows 7, when the mixer wasn't terrible".

The reasons not to use KDE these days are because you need Windows software (usually: edge, teams, Office), or especially because LibreOffice is terrible. The core desktop experience, however, is notably and demonstrably less jank than the mess that is Windows 11.

> These things are objectively better on a modern KDE linux

They are not.

I use a KDE distribution at work. I regularly see GPU texture copy bugs like random lines across the middle of the display, or along the bottom edge. I use a 4K 144 Hz 16:9 display, and the Linux platform absolutely struggles with getting the scaling, resolution, and colour depth on all the dozens of GUI toolkits correct. Subpixel antialiasing doesn't work on many applications. It doesn't matter if I am using Wayland or X; both are bad experiences.

> dual-Sonos / Airpod setup by... clicking the sound icon

Speaking of sound... Linux doesn't even pick up my Audient interface unless I physically reinsert the USB cable. It doesn't have a channel or volume control for audio feedback from my mic to my outputs. If I change the output volume slider down from 100%, the actual volume output is asymmetric—one channel is considerably louder than the other at 50%.

I have experienced issues with wpa_supplicant, iwd/iwctl, and systemd-networkd fighting each other. Why are there even so many network managers? Why does the platform not provide one?

I will disagree until the cows come home that any Linux desktop interface (again, bar Android... but like I said, Android is almost an entirely different platform) is less jank than Windows. People bring up Windows' old UIs, but said UIs still work. gpedit.exe, regedit.exe, msc.exe, services.exe, ncpa.cpl, perfmon.exe, windbg.exe, these are things that haven't changed in nearly 3 decades.

You're mentioning a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with the UI, and also, when it comes to wifi, that most people don't have any problems with.

Android has a horrible interface.

I'm not a regular KDE user, but it's a different universe than a barely customizable interface filled with generational cruft with garbage over the top of it spitting ads at you, saving everything to the cloud, etc.

Most Linux desktops are quiet. They may be a little buggy at times, but Windows is just as buggy at times.

It is a pity that your Linux experience is spoiled by so many bugs. I just want to say that I'm using it for recent years and encountered none of the issues you mention. In fact, my overall experience is butter smooth, regarding hardware support.

Right now my laptop is connected to 4K Dell display and it works perfectly in clamshell mode. I never saw any random lines across the middle of display, GPU acceleration seems to work fine, WebGPU in my Chromium browser works fine, video decode accelerated so 4K video eats a tiny bit of CPU. I can't say anything regarding color depth, everything seems to work fine for me. My display reports "3840x2160, 60Hz 30bit" info. I'm using 2x scaling and fonts are rendered properly (not blurry) in all applications I'm using.

My WiFi is configured using NetworkManager, I don't have iwd installed and systemd-networkd is not enabled. It somewhat helps that I'm using Arch and I decide what to install and what to enable.

I agree that Android provides much more polished system and I'd be happy to switch to desktop Android if that ever will be a thing. I don't like Linux desktop. It's just the only desktop operating system that does not suck for me.

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