Not trying to start flamewars, but more and more I wonder how much are people willing to put up with such practices. On linux for 15+ years and everytime I try to use mac or win, it is an ordeal. And ads. F*cking ads in a system someone has purchased. And spying. Really user hostile environment. No, thank you.
Because Linux is full of sharp edges which nobody seems to find it fit to fix.
I’ve been dabbling in Linux since the early 2000s with Yellow Dog, SUSE, and Ubuntu, tried making it my daily driver in the early-mid 2010s, and for the past 5 or so years have been using it in a secondary/tertiary role.
Recently I’ve been trying to move my gaming box from Windows to Fedora (which I’ve found mostly makes the right tradeoffs to suit my preferences). I’ve gotten things to mostly work, including games that have been blockers in the past, but just yesterday my ethernet connection listing disappeared and broke network connectivity. No big deal I thought, just go into settings and add it back, but as it turns out the KDE settings UI for NetworkManager is horrifically flaky and most critically, its add interface wizard doesn’t set correct settings for a successful connection. No, you have to drop down and use nmcli afterwards to fix things because the UI also doesn’t surface the right checkbox. I wouldn’t have even figured that out if it hadn’t been for a chatbot’s assistance.
This is the exact sort of time-burning nonsense that isn’t a problem on either of the commercial platforms that I tend to encounter under Linux. Is this single instance going to push me to reboot that box back into Windows? No, but if issues like that keep cropping up eventually one will become the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Desire to avoid continued frustration will win over the logical portion of most peoples’ brains.
If you try again, be less ambitious. Don't try to get KDE or Gnome going.
Do a minimal install. Add just enough packages to get X working.
Configure a simple window manager like openbox or dwm.
I uninstall the networking managers. I wrote a simple bash menu program. In one terminal I used that to launch wpa_supplicant for the current network. In another window, I run dhcp. I have a workspace just for that.
When I stay in a hotel, I need to set up a new wpa supplicant profile, and that takes a few minutes. It's klunky. But system upgrades pass by without me noticing.
It's like running an old car with carburettors and simple electrics. You learn the machine once, there's hardly anything to go wrong.
I’ve tried the minimal tiling WM thing several times. It’s not for me. Too many little QoL holes that require manual setup to fix and the disjointed patchwork of small utilities that don’t work with each other or share config conventions quickly becomes grating.
I spend a disproportionate amount of time tinkering with Linux desktops trying to make them act the way I like anyway, but the amount of tinkering is exponentially higher with a minimal WM setup. I can’t get any work done under them.
I also don’t really care to administer everything via the CLI and don’t find it a good use of my time to write Bash scripts for everything. If I’m going to do that I’d rather just write my own DE, because even if that’s a wildly larger task than writing a few scripts I’m going to get vastly more satisfaction out of it since I can make everything work exactly as I think it should.
To be clear - I agree with your statement that Linux is full of sharp edges that won't get fixed. I got abandoned by a series of desktop systems. Like you I had gone to and from the linux desktop but had found it unpolished. I was with Mac OS X for a while, and then a major upgrade broke my workflows. Finally I gave up on having a nice desktop. Once I had accepted that, I found a kind of contentment. It has been 15 years, I wouldn't go back now.
I don’t think I’ll ever give up on having nice things. I’m very firmly of the opinion that my computer should bend to me and do its absolute best to serve me and my needs. A machine that sporadically requires manual twiddling does not meet that requirement.
vitro · · focus · HN ↗
cosmic_cheese · · focus · HN ↗
I’ve been dabbling in Linux since the early 2000s with Yellow Dog, SUSE, and Ubuntu, tried making it my daily driver in the early-mid 2010s, and for the past 5 or so years have been using it in a secondary/tertiary role.
Recently I’ve been trying to move my gaming box from Windows to Fedora (which I’ve found mostly makes the right tradeoffs to suit my preferences). I’ve gotten things to mostly work, including games that have been blockers in the past, but just yesterday my ethernet connection listing disappeared and broke network connectivity. No big deal I thought, just go into settings and add it back, but as it turns out the KDE settings UI for NetworkManager is horrifically flaky and most critically, its add interface wizard doesn’t set correct settings for a successful connection. No, you have to drop down and use nmcli afterwards to fix things because the UI also doesn’t surface the right checkbox. I wouldn’t have even figured that out if it hadn’t been for a chatbot’s assistance.
This is the exact sort of time-burning nonsense that isn’t a problem on either of the commercial platforms that I tend to encounter under Linux. Is this single instance going to push me to reboot that box back into Windows? No, but if issues like that keep cropping up eventually one will become the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Desire to avoid continued frustration will win over the logical portion of most peoples’ brains.
cturner · · focus · HN ↗
Do a minimal install. Add just enough packages to get X working.
Configure a simple window manager like openbox or dwm.
I uninstall the networking managers. I wrote a simple bash menu program. In one terminal I used that to launch wpa_supplicant for the current network. In another window, I run dhcp. I have a workspace just for that.
When I stay in a hotel, I need to set up a new wpa supplicant profile, and that takes a few minutes. It's klunky. But system upgrades pass by without me noticing.
It's like running an old car with carburettors and simple electrics. You learn the machine once, there's hardly anything to go wrong.
cosmic_cheese · · focus · HN ↗
I spend a disproportionate amount of time tinkering with Linux desktops trying to make them act the way I like anyway, but the amount of tinkering is exponentially higher with a minimal WM setup. I can’t get any work done under them.
I also don’t really care to administer everything via the CLI and don’t find it a good use of my time to write Bash scripts for everything. If I’m going to do that I’d rather just write my own DE, because even if that’s a wildly larger task than writing a few scripts I’m going to get vastly more satisfaction out of it since I can make everything work exactly as I think it should.
cturner · · focus · HN ↗
cosmic_cheese · · focus · HN ↗