Say fucking what? When was the last time you tried KDE or Gnome? Gnome is a beautiful masterpiece that blows Windows and Mac OS desktops out of the water.
It’s my opinion. Part of the problem is ‘which desktop’. As long as I can ssh into a Linux system I’m happy. The guis are clunky, but I’ll admit to not having tried all of them or the absolute latest versions. Also, and I likely ought to have mentioned this, in my homelab almost all ‘systems’ are vms, so the desktop gui has to function well in a virtual environment and has to at least try to have a decent rdp implementation.
It’s really not a problem anymore. Look at a distro like Mint, compare the lightweight xfce version versus the full fat Gnome cinnamon. They both look the same on the surface using the same theme, all apps work, look and behave fine over all versions, yet you’ve got the option between “small and snappy” or “pretty and high end” which works much better than turning off the animations in Windows.
I’ve been an on/off Linux desktop user for years and now is just a comfy time to be a Linux user. All websites work, most of my Steam/Epic and GOG library just works with no messing, the various software stacks we use day to day are there, mature and “just work”.
Many DE have received substantial improvements over the last couple of years. It sounds like you’re really looking for something lightweight, more than you are something that is fully featured. I don’t have much experience with the lightweight Linux DE, because when I need performance I just use command line like you do. I’m sure if you did some searching, you could find a really snappy DE, but it doesn’t sound very important for your use case. Definitely do check out some of the full-featured desktops though if you ever decide to use Linux as a primary PC. Several of them are really slick now.
A few apps I needed didn’t work on Linux without a hassle and a lot of games I play with friends only run on Windows. I also found a lot of things were kind of a hassle on Linux, especially screen scaling. Fractional screen scaling straight up barely works and everything on my laptop screen was usually tiny.
I would totally go back when the experience is a bit nicer, I’m pretty frustrated with Windows. I think the Linux desktop experience isn’t totally ready imo.
Two things: the Adobe Creative Cloud (which I hate but am totally dependent on) and better support for FreeSync with more than one display. Even with a 7900XT, which gets open-source drivers, graphics stuff is just easier on Windows.
I have to have a computer science degree to install a peice of software… I just wanna double click the installer icon. I don’t want to have to write out some long String in terminal to install software. And sometimes it’s different depending on distro.
Most major distributions come with a software center of some kind. And with Flatpaks, AppImages, and gag Snaps, it pretty much is just click and install these days.
What’s wrong with snaps? I’m giving Linux another go so I’m still learning. I’m trying Ubuntu on an ancient iMac right now but I also have Pop!_OS in a vm on my windows pc to play with. I haven’t installed anything on pop but I noticed Ubuntu had snaps.
Snaps are proprietary to Canonical (Ubuntu). Historically, they were larger, slower to load, and generally slower overall to use With a good SSD and system, I’m not sure that’s the case anymore though.
Ohh. Thanks for that info. Proprietary stuff and forced ads are two of the biggest things pushing me away from windows right now so that’s good to know.
Am I wrong or is it easier to install software on Linux? The package manager basically figures out everything for you and you don’t need to hunt for an exe all over the Internet.
It is much easier, os long as that version is in main repo. If not, it can still be easy (run this one extra command), or you are gonna pull your hair out trying to figure out how to install some antique proprietary software on fedora, using an installing guide made for Ubuntu 16.04. :)
I wouldn't force the issue. Some people belong on Windows and I'd rather they don't use Linux simply because I don't want them complaining to developers that it doesn't act like Windows. Linus Tech Tips already caused enough damage by doing exactly that.
I feel like it’s pretty obvious I was exaggerating. There’s just extra steps that I’ve always had to take. It’s never been simple for me. A lot of terminal commands in not familiar with.
Hate to say it but, laziness… bought a new gaming laptop with windows 11. My old laptop was running Mint for a couple of years and I really loved it. Software wise everything I needed just worked.
Peripheral compatibility was my biggest issue. Most vendors just don’t make Linux versions. One that I couldn’t work around was my Razer Huntsman v2 Analog. While I was told about the open source Razer app alternatives, they were far from feature complete. My keyboard ended up defaulting to a profile where WASD emulated a controller instead, and the software didn’t have a way of changing it outside of windows.
Indie software is also a big miss. I play FF14. I use a Streamdeck with a custom plugin for hot keys. That is windows only. I use Teamcraft. Also windows only.
The problem is really one that I’m feeding into by going back to windows. There’s just not enough people on Linux to rationalize app development on smaller projects for it. I feel bad going to a one man Dev team and being like “Hey, you should stop everything and do this for just me, because no one else will use the Linux version”.
Could I work around some of these issues? Probably. Could I advocate for Linux software and put together my own alternatives? Probably. But by the time I’m done with work and just want to play a game…I don’t want to spend hours reinventing the wheel.
Ultimately windows is there, and I can make it do what I need it to do. While I’d love to use Linux, it’s just not a viable option for me.
My main device is Windows, but for peripherals for at least keyboards I have moved towards actively choosing those with qmk support since it got annoying needing dedicated software for corsair or Logitech or razor and so on.
I’ve tried Linux a few times each time would seem to be good apart from gaming but every single time something I Didn’t Even realise I did broke it completely. I’d say I’ve never had linux work for more than a few months.
With windows an install no matter how inconviant and annoying with forced updates has always lasted me years. Don’t get me wrong though I hate Microsoft but I need my games and I want reliability.
To me following linux guides has mostly ended in an unbootable system.
Yeah. I wanted to build a custom theme from source, and installed all the dependencies. Tried the theme, realized it had the usual issues just like every other theme, uninstalled it. Then I uninstalled everything I needed to build it, as the terminal history was still there and I could tell exactly what was installed. Guess what? apt would’ve nuked my desktop environment if I didn’t stop it, almost as if what I had installed was a required dependency. Pretty sure it was optional though, since everything was more or less working before installing
–Edit
Forgot to mention the custom theme was for qt5ct, not for the desktop environment
Screen size problems. My PC is setup as gaming/HTPC for the living room.
Constantly having to fight with it reverting from the 1080 I set, to native 4k. Pretty jarring when you’re popping out of a game and expecting a different res.
Other than that my daughter plays Minecraft with her friends and needed windows for that because I’m not purchasing the game a third time.
WSL2 and work. Firstly at work i’m forced to use Windows since all the dev toolchains and deployement Tools are unfortunately Windows only… And secondly since I have be able to work from home (at night or afterwards) I need Windows on my Box as well. Thirdly, other than that my private coding projects all died since I just wanna switch off once I’m done and game a little… So there Windows also wins out. And lastly since all my Servers run Linux if i need to write a Script and test it WSL did the Job so far.
Very unfortunate since i enjoy using Linux (love i3) but i cant be bothered at the moment :( Maybe the next dev job allows for a Linux Environment :)
Necessity. When most of the software you use is reliant on Windows it’s hard to make Linux your daily driver. That being said, the changes needed to make it worth it are already done in limited contexts. Steam deck is pure Linux, the user interface and everything is implemented in a way that the user does not have to deal with the complexity, but the underlying mechanisms for doing wonky shit is still there if you want to mess with it. It’s kinda the best of both worlds in that sense.
If we wanted a desktop experience to replicate that, you would just have to do the exact same thing. Abstract the user experience such that the layperson does not need to engage with the complicated bits, but leave them there for those that do want them. And arguably that is being done with some distros, but it’s just not quite there yet.
Steam works flawlessly with Linux now. If you have an Nvidia GFX card then you can even get a Pop!_OS install with the driver pre-configured. It’s pretty rad!
Necessity for me, too. After three years of using Linux, I went back to school and it was needlessly difficult trying to get everything to work together. The nail in the coffin was when I had to use some proctoring software and I couldn’t use a virtual machine. I just went back to Windows.
If I didn’t have to use Windows, I’d probably still use Linux. I really enjoyed how snappy it was.
A few apps like Photoshop and Fusion360 keep my running Windows. The graphics card situation is also a giant pain in the ass, my laptop has a Radeon and a RTX 3080 and I can't get any kind of prime offloading to work. I'd really like to use the radeon unless i'm running something intensive that needs 3d acceleration, but i think I'd likely have to reboot to switch between them.
That leaves me running the RTX chip the whole time so the laptop draws about 40W at idle, when running windows it's more like 10W because the nvidia chip is completely off.
Oh that’s a bummer. In my case, my system had a MUX switch, though I’m not fully familiar with it, it changed GPUs based on what the application demanded. It turned out to be a huge pain in the ass when the mighty Alienware turned out to be a bug riddled bloatware laptop and I had to disable the MUX switch to actually play games. Stuck with the dedicated GPU like you now, unfortunately.
I think the Intel/nvidia combo works (with a lot of caveats) but the amd/nvidia one seems way less supported. Not a massive deal for me as I mostly use it as a desktop replacement machine, but it does suck to only get about 2.5 hrs of battery life on the rare occasions that i'm untethered.
Sadly, just software compatibility - doing music with specific programs needed for assignments etc - If drivers and compatibility weren’t an issue, I never would have switched. :) I will consider using Linux again full time if my current machine ever gives up though, now that gaming has advanced so much further. :)
The only way I could level up is to go back to university and get a PhD in music… I studied it for 6 years and am happy with the level of my musical process.
I would definitely argue that Linux has good music software… But better? By what metric? I love what I’m using, it doesn’t get in the way and lets me explore ideas at will, it performs perfectly, its very stable.
Now, for me, the perks to Linux are freedom and privacy. This is excellent, and in this specific use-case, I find this within what I’m using on Windows. Even during using Ubuntu Studio as my daily os, I had to keep a copy of XP available in case I wanted to use a particular bit of software, a plugin, or a technique.
I agree that the solution would be for software vendors to target Linux… But they don’t, and not having the choice to use these tools would mean an interior result. Linux can’t and shouldn’t be the answer to every issue, It only serves to mislead if it isn’t true.
I would definitely argue that Linux has good music software… But better? By what metric?
By the metric that windows is a closed box while linux can be tuned to be a much better machine to play and make music. Not having the possibility to route audio is a joke and an even bigger joke is using windows to play live with 0 control over what it does
Okay, imagine I can see windows in all its inefficient, telemetry riddled candy crush glory… in a better of minutes I can start making music with my hardware, with absolutely no setup besides plugging in some cables and downloading my program.
I spent months trying to convince JACK that my PC had a line-out even with the help of some lovely people over at JACK and Ubuntu forums, the answer we all came to was to try using Windows 7, which grudgingly got on with it, no issue at all.
I really, really wanted to ditch Windows for good, and did so proudly for almost five years, I have no loyalty to companies because that’s daft. But part of maturing is knowing that someone tried a thing, it didn’t work for them, and what works for you may vary. My build on my computer has been rock solid for performances, live recording, making entire games… I can’t fault the damn thing try as I do!
I think it does the amazing work of the FOSS world a disservice to go after people exercising their choice to use whatever they want. It also makes these people feel unwelcome, and less likely to want to touch Linux with a ten-foot-pole.
I had various distros, and would to this day run LXLE proudly if I didn’t have a need to use the music software I do. I still rock FOSS projects as much as possible (an old Audacity build gets much of what I need to do with game audio done, I take great glee in never touching Adobe products).
That said, in my subjective use case, I can’t in any way say that the ethics of Linux made me make better music, but it did make me interested in technology, and that’s also good. Arguing with Ardour and Jack to get Audio out was tedious, and I lost months of productivity through trying to will things to work.
I hope that’s a constructive and helpful way to expand on this. :)
I was taught using Ableton Live, and Max MSP mainly - this was back in 2014 or so, they might be wine-able now but I’ve not tested in years! :) There’s Bitwig now, which is very similar, but I had to submit Ableton Live projects and Max Patches to show my workflow.
I’m back to hobby musicking, and I sometimes think about putting together a Ubuntu Studio build again - ardour was cool, and I enjoyed LMMS for sequencing :)
In fact, I need to get off my backside and make more music in general! It’s amazing how fast life can take over, I miss it! :/
These are good programs, however, I would argue that Pure Data is the only one that offers the same or better functionality.
Don’t get me wrong, I used to use Ardour and LMMS for everything, Ardour is fantastic for tracking and composing linear stuff.
But Ableton’s compositional abilities and creative live performance put it in its own category in comparison - Ardour would be more of a Logic, Cubase, ProTools alternative in my mind. The ability to perform almost collaboratively with internal logic, the simplicity of connecting seemingly any device to a session via an M4L patch- it’s just so different.
As I said, I was studying electronic music, and my lecturer was teaching us Ableton, assessing us based on a final recording and the project itself. There’s no way I could have abstained from that without a big old zero on my grade- and missing out on some truly great experiences, performances and knowledge picked up on the way.
Sometimes ideology isn’t a simple thing, I use FOSS projects as much as possible, even contribute when possible, but I need to work and live on the way.
I would also like to add that Jack circa 2014 was an utter mess, I’m sure it’s come on leaps since, but that was always something I felt I fought to get working rather than used. Making the same audio connection in Windows would be automatic, and Jack felt more like a seance.
Anyway, my point is that there’s a lot of details and thoughts to people’s choices in these things, and if there was one OS and audio workstation for music, it would be a very, very bland thing. :) Anywho, have an excellent night :)
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