An honest look at the state of the Linux desktop going into 2024

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Try out Proton VPN, it's free, it's open source, it's private, it's encrypted, and it's what I use: protonvpn.com/TheLinuxEXP

[@SomeRandomPiggo]

Comment is from 4 hours ago, video is 15 seconds old xD

[@faxinspace]

@usersomeone5287 scheduled, more likely

[@emiliumax]

Also you are first!

[@clankfish]

@usersomeone5287 scheduled uploads

[@KuraiBeat]

nope every vpn costs there

[@TensaFlow]

I just want apps to respect display scaling regardless of desktop environment.

[@Hype_Incarnate]

loaded up Nobara last night just become I had a couple of hours to waste, set the desktop scaling to 125 (just like I have in windows), loaded up path of exile and the game is super zoomed in. yeah I hope they fix the scaling.

[@whothefoxcares]

Come on! Everyone loves the smartphone experience on 25"+ desktop monitors.

[@constancies]

Games being zoomed in is due to a poor method of scaling XWayland apps that GNOME has refused to fix on multiple occasions, even though KDE Plasma has largely solved it a year and a half ago. Their solution doesn’t cover every X11 app, but it covers most of them, and fixes the issue of games being zoomed in. If you want proper XWayland fractional scaling, you must use KDE Plasma.

[@JV-pu8kx]

Independent scaling per display!

[@IakobusAtreides]

Exactly 👍🏻

[@burnin8orable]

In summary, improvements with display, hardware, GPU, and gaming; package management and theming is fragmented; no progress on apps.

[@luc1ddaemon]

Never seen an advertisement for a Proton product. I've been using it for 6 years with very little issues.

[@klevkaisetsu4883]

As the end of the year is near, I want you to know that it's a pleasure to watch your videos about our favorite OS. Thank you very very much for your work!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thank you very much !!

[@igordasunddas3377]

I wholeheartedly agree!

[@orkhepaj]

favorite? that is win11

[@ditrypand8273]

@@orkhepaj 😁

[@cameronbosch1213]

We need more preinstalled Linux laptop OEMs in the U.S. Slimbook & Tuxedo, as good as they are in the EU, aren't really cost effective in the U.S. and System76 is pretty much the only one, and none of their laptops are really that competitive... We just need one major OEM to make more Linux laptops that are competitive, like with 16 : 10 screens and more recent CPUs and GPUs...

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Yeah, and these need to be sold in stores, for more notoriety!

[@cameronbosch1213]

​​​@@TheLinuxEXPOh definitely. Imagine being able to walk into a Best Buy or Micro Center (the two big name computer stores remaining in the U.S.) and being able to see laptops with both Windows 11 and Linux (even if it is just one distro like Ubuntu or Linux Mint). I'd probably be interested to try it out! Of course, Microsoft would try and throw money at these stores to avoid them from putting Linux preinstalled on their hardware, but there's only so much they can do.

[@wombatdk]

That won't work, because what'll happen is that they take the laptop home, try to install some Windows software on it and return it "because it doesn't work". That's happened at least one time before when some retailer (forgot who) did exactly that. Linux will never be a mainstream desktop OS. It's a niche "enthusiast" OS, nothing more.

[@fabiandrinksmilk6205]

@@wombatdk Mainstream laptop OEMs already make Linux laptops and brand them as developer laptops. Look at the Dell XPS 13 9315 and HP Dev One. They come with Ubuntu and Pop!_OS respectively.

[@cameronbosch1213]

@@wombatdk That's what Microsoft wants you to think. There's no way people would just install Windows applications on a non Windows system. And if they _did_ do that, that blame is on the store for not trying to help the users with their products that they sold. In that case, of course they would and should return it. The salespeople should let them know what does and doesn't work and (preferably) offer some sort of technical support. (Even if it's paid, that's another avenue of revenue.)

[@oldm9228]

I switched to Linux a few months ago and all my damn games are running! My software development experience is liberating! When it comes to specialized software (which i don't need) it's not there yet. However, I believe that the success of blender can be a model for other programs.

[@misterperson7070]

On a desktop i presume

[@cieplydran1]

You can always try dual booting to windows and linux

[@OPAgusta]

Which distro?

[@oldm9228]

Mint

[@janipt]

I just installed mint and my games all work and i get better performance wth

[@Zerotymn]

Personally I find KDE much more easier to use after moving over from window 11. Currently I’m running Kubuntu and Flatpak is easy to install for me.

[@lepatenteux592]

It is a matter of taste... I prefer gnome, but they both work great! I find myself looking for stuff more on KDE, but it might just be that I use it less.

[@Zerotymn]

@@lepatenteux592Honestly everyone has their own preferences, that’s what make Linux so special. You can choose your distribution & desktop environment however you like.

[@darellldark]

Moved to KDE recently after many many years of Windows experience. And it feels so great. Customizable, pretty to an eye, works perfectrly fine. The only problem I have is fucking nvidia card - it sucks with wayland. I really started to consider selling my nvidia gpu and replace it with amd one

[@lepatenteux592]

@@Zerotymn Totally agree... You get to choose when using Linux!

[@lepatenteux592]

@@darellldark I ditched nvidia years ago because of that... I just got an interest in it last week because I need a faster video rendering "farm" and there is nothing as fast as nvidia at the moment on Linux... Even using older cards! But that would be its only purpose for me... I can't use it for anything else!

[@SilkCrown]

What's really frustrating for me as a Linux user is when an app I've been using through wine/proton goes from working perfectly to not working at all because of an update. Sometimes I go months with everything I need working no issue. Other months I start wondering if I need to switch back to Windows because more and more things stop working. The state of Linux app compatibility is always in flux.

[@FengLengshun]

This is why I'd use a Wine manager like Bottles or WineZGUI. You can choose and lock the version as you want it to be. Also why I report to ProtonDB or put it in my review for the game, because if I forgot what worked then I can recheck the game page.

[@g4z-kb7ct]

It's pretty simple. If your system does what you need don't update. Problem solved. Most updates do very little anyway.

[@FengLengshun]

This is why I like Bottles and WineZGUI via Flatpak. You decide when to upgrade and what version, the dependencies are upgraded predictably, and you can downgrade any components and the apps themselves.

[@Daniel_VolumeDown]

​@@g4z-kb7ct that is not a solution for all apps. You sometimes need to update app so it connects correctly to servers etc. For example in games, video chat clients, apps where you can edit something with other people (editing at the same time or even when you send files to someone and then that person have old version of software).

[@SnLeo-zx6qy]

It's not mandated by law that you have to use one and only one system. Yes, maybe you have to use Windows too. Dual boot, another machine or simply use an external SSD with Windows and/or other systems. When Windows is better, you just use Windows. There's no need for "switching back" anywhere

[@pikminpro6692]

Can't wait for Wine to support Wayland natively, I'd ditch grandpa X11 in a heartbeat

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Oh yeah

[@Ralphunreal]

wayland is awful, has many issues.

[@pcallycat9043]

Loved the “almost done” comment. Linux desktop improvements have been “almost done” for 20 years. They’ll never be done because there’s always the ‘next big thing’ someone comes up with that takes the next 10 years to migrate to, just in time for the next ‘next big thing’ to come around the corner. Just look at init systems, the sound subsystems, hell…gnome in general changes everything every few years just to be different.

[@sergeykish]

I've switched in 2006. Linux is in much better shape now. Systemd migration was seamless, there were issues with PulseAudio but ALSA still works. Migration to Wayland was seamless for me, waited until it was ready. Meanwhile portals unified "open file dialogue", "take screenshot" - previously implemented in many different ways. Pipewire united PulseAudio and JACK. Bluetooth headphones works. Windows, macOS, Android changes with each release, that's fine.

[@pcallycat9043]

@@sergeykish I've been in since the mid 1990's.. I honestly dont' have any issues with linux, i just chuckle when people thing anything about it is 'almost done'. Done will never not be a moving target in this ecosystem, and there will always be change. With so many hands in the pie, there's always someone finding a new way to achieve something, some catch on, some fade, but the change always comes. People are getting excited about wayland 'being done', but, it will be as old as x11 was when wayland was started by the time it reaches any real level of maturity, and someone will think it's dead code and start a new replacement. Systemd caught on cuz the big red dog pushed it, but now that redhat is going more corporate, what next? It didn't bring anything new to the table, concurrent launch and watchdog processes are nothing new. Someone will find a new catchy way to do it, and it'll get replaced too. Not really a big deal, just.. never going to be 'done'. And honestly, the second innovation and change stops, might as well just call it windows :) I welcome the changes.

[@rigierish3807]

You're just being dramatic about it. Yes, Linux won't occupy 90% of the market share in a year and become the popular OS, like Android is in the smartphones, that's why the “year of Linux desktop” is dumb and always was, since the beginning, but year after year, it becomes more and more decent for people, allowing them to actually use it without having to solve problems constantly because things don't work very well so you have to know basic to advanced commands to be able to solve those issues. I switched to Linux a year ago, I learned a lot on it and because I read and talked to a lot of people about it, I got to compare it with its state 5, 10 or even 20 years ago. And I can confidently tell you that, if I switched a year ago, I would've never switched even 5 years ago (especially for the lack of gaming option), let alone 10 or 20 years ago, if that was its state now. Just to put into perspective, back then: - you couldn't play a single video game that wasn't Linux native, because Wine was still a small project where running a single Windows game was already an achievement, now you can play 90% of Windows games without a significant loss in FPS or stability, if not better performance. - you couldn't run most apps because either they didn't exist on Linux (and their Windows version didn't work with Wine) or they did exist, but on another distro and nobody recompiled it for your distro, so you had to compile it yourself, granted you know how to do it. Now, you can find your Linux app as a flatpak, rpm, deb, pkg, snap, appimage, and it's all up-to-date, you can't complain about not having the choice. And for Windows programs, with the exception of a few (and unfortunately big) programs like Photoshop or Autodesk and such, you can easily run any program on Linux using Wine and an app that make it so much simpler to set up like Bottles. - you could totally forget having an Nvidia card and expecting just a few problems (the “Nvidia patch” or “command for Nvidia cards” for anything wasn't rare), now you can use an Nvidia card and except very specific features like Ray Tracing (something that is being worked on), you won't encounter a single problem (besides some remaining issue on Wayland which isn't a standard now, even if it will become soon) - you couldn't realistically use Linux without knowing the basic commands and without spending some time in the terminal, precisely because you would always run into issues that required you to use the terminal. Now, it's all over: you have distros where you don't have to touch even once the terminal (or know any command) and where you're not supposed to anyway (even if you can always use it: it's not locked or something, just not necessary). - you had a lot of hardware that simply didn't work and either you could find workaround on the internet, or you just accepted you'll never make it work on Linux. Now, as Nick/Linux Experiment said in the video, you will hardly find hardware that simply cannot run at all on Linux, because either it works out of the box, or you can easily find someone who made a driver for your specific hardware. - you always had to dual boot with Windows so you could always switch if something didn't work on Linux, which wasn't uncommon. Now, you can daily drive Linux easily (as I currently do) and even if you encounter a problem, there always will be a solution (VM count, as it's so much easier to set one now, with Virtual Box or QEMU, for more advanced users). There are some other things that I could mention but I think it's already enough to make you realize all the progress that has been made and if you didn't have any problem dealing with Linux issues (or you somehow never encountered any issues or at least, serious ones) since you started using it (since the mid 1990s, as you said it), a lot of people simply can't tolerate half of what Linux was even 5 years ago, like gaming which was basically impossible and is for a lot of people crucial in their OS's choice, because we're not all developers or even computer literate. As a matter of fact, now you can install a user friendly Linux distro to a generally computer illiterate like an old person or a child and they won't encounter any single issue.

[@iivarimokelainen]

@@sergeykish you really expect an average windows user to figure out pulse/alsa/jack stuff? lmao. windows is miles ahead in HDR, consistent desktop dialogs, audio and gpu systems. i have a place in my heart for linux, but its not even nearly ready.

[@sergeykish]

@@iivarimokelainen no need to figure out pipewire, wireplumber, it just works. Ever heard of Steam Deck?

[@voteDC]

The biggest issue for Linux to hit the mainstream is also its greatest strength...there's too many damn versions of it. Even Linux Mint, which I use, has four different versions on its download page.

[@zoox3732]

Very true! I've realized going into analysis of someone's choices once they say they're trying some distro _isn't_ actually such a good thing. "Oh don't use Ubuntu it's spyware/bloated", "Arch/Gentoo is too advanced", "Pop! OS is abandoned", "Linux Mint doesn't support Wayland (being revised)", "Red Hat is being a little sketchy with the upstream code to Fedora", I mean the list goes on and on!!

[@mbazoka]

This. There isn't one-single company/organization spearheading the development of "Linux" forward (nobody wants Canonical to do that, so not counting them) in a singular direction - and until that is amended, Linux will stay niche. Valve and Mozilla have massive potential, with Valve being the much more realistic hope for Linux going mainstream, but they have been dragging their feet with SteamOS for some time now. As bad as "going mainstream" might sound, without that happening, Linux will never receive proper 3rd-party support in terms of media playback (HDR), gaming anti-cheat software & developer support, and app support. Some things just have to be agreed upon (a standard) in development before any advancements can be made.

[@davidddo]

​@@mbazoka exactly my thoughts, maybe fedora will be the one

[@fiona9891]

​​@@mbazoka not having to depend on a specific company is a feature, not an issue having a single corporation spearhead linux is a recipe for enshittification, the issue isn't canonical, i don't trust mozilla or valve to not eventually do that either i do think standards are a good idea though, not having to specifically make software compatible with eachother and just having them implement standards is great

[@averdadeeumaso4003]

Mint really has just 2 versions on its page, 1 with newer Kernel and 1 with stable, the rest are preinstalled desktop environments.

[@PostalHeathen]

Gaming has been the one thing holding me back from embracing Linux on my desktop machine. I use Arch on my laptop, since it's not a gaming machine, but that's not my daily driver. I'm glad to hear that gaming support is still improving and I might take another shot at it after I can afford to upgrade my video card.

[@pythonxz]

Nobara works well, but the support still isn't there yet. There are too many games that just don't work or have serious bugs.

[@temari2860]

BTW Gnome has a little bit of a drama regarding the accent color standard. The desktops have basically devided into 2 camps: one that wants only pre-defined accent colors to be supported and another one that wants users to be able to choose absolutely any color as their accent. Gnome devs said that the latter is not even in the question and they barely agree on pre-define accents. So far it seems like the open standard will allow any accent color to be set, and more restrictive desktops will just clamp this color to their closest pre-defined one.

[@Aresydatch]

Totally custom accent colours provide the user with much more Freedom and make the desktop look more personalised, should be a no brainer.

[@vocassen]

Idk if I should be surprised anymore with Gnome developers madness

[@temari2860]

@@Aresydatch On the other side it might create difficulties with contrast and readability, which is what GNOME and Pantheon devs argue for. I think COSMIC devs got the best solution for it currently (be it not released) as they will allow any color as an accent, but will generate the rest of color scheme in such a way to create a good contrast for your accent.

[@temari2860]

@@vocassen If they want unified desktop with specific look that is not customizable that's fine with me, I just hope we get at least some form of accent colors so that libadwaita apps I use on my desktop won't look too out of place

[@vocassen]

@@temari2860 Since when did Gnome care about apps looking out of place? They force all apps to draw decorations themselves, so not even the header looks the same across the board (except for whoever uses GTK). They obviously don't care. And what apps would adjust the color scheme based on the preset color anyway (over the fluid one)? At that point, just have this fluid->preset conversion in the code that is supposed to adjust the rest of the theme, done. None of these are an argument for restriction of choice, at best it's hipocrisy

[@Mtaalas]

I sometimes feel that whole OSS is like herding cats. Every project that has gone somewhere proper has gotten very good project lead and who's actively put real effort into the overall design and coordination of effort, but ultimately, people are just donating their free time and it's quite an impossibility to ask someone to rewrite large sections of a large software to make it better, so it's all pretty much just fiddling and tweaking for fun. It ultimately inches forward, but without very active effort and some real money behind the effort (to get dedicated full time devs and designers) it's all just like herding cats. It's going to take few decades still.

[@dmt00000]

I'm really curious to see how that dynamic changes with tools like copilot (when it gets better than it is now of course)

[@teklife]

i gotta hand it to you nick, just love your integrity. even on a sponsor for a vpn, you say "i don't (usually) recommend vpn services", and include chapters to skip it. i didn't tho just because i want ur video to get the full playthrough and help out your sponsors too. if i ever do need a VPN i'll definitely go with proton

[@WolfiiDog13]

AI is the exact same thing as smart assistants, as in, it looks cool in concept, and can do some specific things really well, but it's wide usage is very limited. It's not the revolutionary thing some industry enthusiasts claim to be. Linux desktops should definitelly focus in making the best and most user-centric possible desktops.

[@Alexander-ix2jp]

Tuxedo 💕 btw @ Nick, did you know that Tuxedo now has their own Linux OS called "Tuxedo-OS 2" which is based on Ubuntu? Reminds me of what System76 does with Pop OS. Have you reviewed Tuxedo OS yet? Would love to see how it does compared to the other Linux desktops.

[@Alexander-ix2jp]

Update: Nvm, I just found the Tuxedo 2 review video on your channel. No idea how I missed it in the first place! Very well done! Thx!

[@FengLengshun]

You know, I wouldn't be surprised if instead of Snaps or Flatpak winning, we'd just see a ready-to-use CI or builder that just do a best-effort build and push to both formats. I feel like our go to solution is "making something that can encompass the old stuff," with how we make Wayland to solve x11, then XWayland to solve compatibility, then Pipewire to solve media pipeline in all of them and Portals to solve permissions for all of them, and then there's even xfce-wayland and wlroots which is used for multiple DEs and WMs, heck there's also how even Bottles decided to just move to electron to encompass as many environment as they can. It's not quite THAT xkcd comic, but it does feel like our solution is always "build something new." I guess, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Edit: One more example for this becoming reality - GE made ULWGL to unify the backend of all the game launchers so they can properly use Proton since people kept using Proton despite how it's not supposed to be used outside of Steam and you're supposed to just use Wine instead.

[@sergeykish]

We also have console emulators, wine, virtual machines. XWayland is one of these. Portals standardized functionality like "open file dialog", "take screenshot" etc. Pipewire unified PulseAudio and JACK, media streams. Same but better.

[@olafschluter706]

The question there to ask and answer is: "Why are things like flatpak or snap even necessary?". The honest answer to this questions reveals everything that is wrong with Linux these days.

[@sergeykish]

@@olafschluter706 Flatpak role is similar to Docker, Nix. Updating dependencies often requires fixing code, changes requires testing. Flatpak ships "runtimes" and "extensions" that's different from system version. Nix solves same problem but tracks each dependency independently. Dockerfile layers defined by users.

[@FengLengshun]

@@olafschluter706 I don't see how every repo having their own management policy, and thus different format and versions of binary, is something thay is wrong about Linux. It's a good idea - Debian, Red Hat, Canonical, and Arch Linux are made with different design goals and visions in mind. I don't hate any of them, but it makes no sense fo any of them to be the be-all end-all of all of Linux, be it for servers of different purposes, embedded systems, containerized systems, VMs, workstation, handheld gaming PCs, normal desktop, and phones. I think the fact that they're necessary points to the success of Linux - which is a system made by everyone, for everyone, owned by everyone. Flatpak, Snaps, AppImage, Nix, and Containers are the tools to bridge those groups of different interests and preferences. IMHO the issue is just that Snaps isn't as great for GUI desktop apps but Canonical tries to push them while being adamantly against Flatpak.

[@colbyboucher6391]

Does anyone even use Snaps?

[@hummel6364]

Well I would say that an app developer can just say "We use snap/flatpack, and only that." This massively reduces issues for them to fix because they can ship one single known good version, much like Windows software is shipped in one version with a specific set of dependencies, such as DirectX for games. It lowers the development time needed to offer Linux versions, and yes, it does suck a little for users, but you can get snaps to work pretty much anywhere, and it means you at least get A VERSION of the app. Photoshop would be a good candidate. So many of us want it on Linux, and would be willing to use any of these formats to get it.

[@chad_8313]

The roadblock I hit was gaming peripheral support. There's a few alternatives like Piper, but for the most part I cannot configure gaming mice, keyboards, or headsets without access to Windows. I also lack the ability to play a handful of competitive FPS games like PUBG and Warzone. They're not my main games, but I'd like to play them every once in a while.

[@reveriec]

For Logitech mice, the best one has been Solaar. But that only controls the DPI, that’s it

[@NatesRandomVideo]

Ahh. Somehow it is starting to feel good that the same list of challenges has been in the year end summaries for a quarter of a century. Never change, Linux! Thanks for the coverage. See ya next year, sir!

[@jaimeFaithBasedOne]

While the main problems are the same, how things break changes all the time, it’s almost ironic to say never change, it spends so much time changing and fighting those who resist change that it doesn’t get ahead… unless you got chromeos or steamdeck, maybe

[@orkhepaj]

like the next year is linux's year mantra ? and yet linux stays at 2% useage :P

[@temari2860]

I'm a sucker for theming and visual consistency but realistically we will never get a single toolkit with single visual language across all existing apps, and frankly it will be somewhat boring even for me. Having light/dark mode + accent color should be good enough for most people to feel like their desktop is personal and coherent, while still allowing for different toolkits to co-exist. I wonder if other proprietary toolkits will also implement that at some point, like electron and stuff.

[@gimcrack555]

The Year of the Linux Desktop happen to me on 2003. I found fixes or at least round about ways to get my Linux system the way I want it to run it. Every Linux Guru can do this. I don't do the mix and match of packages. I stuck the old way before all those containers stuff. It works great this way, going to stick with my guns and keep it that way. The old way works, I'm one of those, if it ain't broken don't fix it.

[@lmotaku]

I know how you get more desktops: One package that works on all distros. Like Windows. .EXE installers for the most part work, on all versions of Windows, unless some underlying dynamic link layer is missing (.dll) or some language packages, like .NET. It's hard to imagine that it would be hard for the community of linux to support something like Proton, but for detecting your OS, library locations, kernel version and installing a package based on that, but if it requires languages like say C, Go, Perl, Python, C++, just having requirements packaged along with their software installer. NO apt this, rpm that, just ./file.ext or double-click. It's almost like Microsoft doesn't have WAE (Windows Application Experience), keeping a database of Applications and how to make them work perfectly when they don't.

[@顔boom]

Am I misunderstanding what you're saying here? That's what /opt/ is for and we've had such packages for decades. It's just that the amount of users afraid of their tools, due to not knowing how they work, has increased exponentially during the same timeframe. So they instead opt for the less secure OS that doesn't provide the options.

[@lmotaku]

@@顔boom I'm sorry to say, any insecurities on Windows today are no different than what could be done on linux. With Windows defender being automatically enabled on all machines and firewall, even files ran as administrator are checked against the Defender database. Someone has to willfully disable defender and install a shady program as administrator for anything bad to happen. On linux it will prompt for a sudoer password and done. There are 3-5 less steps to infect a linux desktop than a Windows one. You have to be willfully ignorant to not know this.

[@lmotaku]

@@顔boom To reply to the actual question instead of the condescending jab, I mean that the problem with Linux is the problem daddy Linux has with linux. You have too many package managers. Too different software hierarchies. One flavor of linux is not the same as another. Apt, rpm, synaptic, flatpaks, whatever. Instead of one file working across all distributions without requiring them to build it themselves. Developers have this ideology of "If it doesn't work rebuild it", no normal person is psychologically unhinged and wants to do that for every program on their computer.

[@顔boom]

It's not a "condescending jab", Defender is out of date by the time it matters and the users are regularly trained to "allow all" and bring in executables from random sources even for basic utilities. Meanwhile on most any Linux based operating system you have everything you need available from vetted sources through a unified tool. Also, like I said, there already exists a standard for those third-parties who wishes to bundle all their dependencies themselves. They also have the option of installing their app in the users directory, no root access required there. You don't generally "install languages". Go, C, C++, and most other languages, are executed by the kernel via the aptly named exec system call. What they might require in some cases are shared libraries. These shared libraries, dependencies, are one of the things which the package manager takes care of. Python is generally ran in an interpreter, sort of like the Shell. Perl, like Java, is generally ran in a virtual machine. I've certainly never seen Windows automagically install Python, Perl, or Java when required... See the issue here I think is that you're looking at Linux based operating systems as "flavors", rather than distinct operating systems that share some common core utilities. Apt, synaptic (and aptitude) are just frontends for dpkg. It makes no rewal difference which one you opt to choose, just like how you can use the web browser you prefer There are no rebuilding. The difference between .deb and .rpm lies in the compression format and the manifest. If you want some monolithic entity controlling things then just stick to Windows, Edge and Outlook. What's so difficult about that? @@lmotaku

[@lmotaku]

​@@顔boom It definitely is, because your knowledge is misleading or willfully ignorant, like I said. You basically said the exact same thing that Windows purportedly does as if linux distributions don't do the same thing. I have not had an infected system for well over 20 years and you're sitting here saying Windows does all this wrong. The problem lies with people who peddle linux desktops as something that can replace what everyone is already using when it isn't. Yes package managers are vetted, but they can still break your operating system. Nothing on the Microsoft store has ever destroyed user space or how it functions, but something insalled via apt or through synaptic can. It's like you don't believe I've ever used Linux before and I don't use it on my servers. I know what trying to change ALSA to pulseaudio could do to your x Server. Hell, trying to change your video driver used to sometimes make you have to start from scratch. Linux distros sit there and teach you to just input your sudoer password and everything will install. There is nothing that I've ever seen on apt or synaptic that was a daemon or some other functionality that was important that didn't require elevated privileges and that's just the way it is. A stupid person is just as likely to put in their password and run rm -rf */* as they are a Windows program that attempts to delete your C:/ drive. If you don't understand that, then there isn't a conversation to be had here about security. Just because the distro managers vetted a program doesn't mean it can't destroy your installation. Any SINGLE installation source, whether it be from linux or Windows can install dependencies. From .sos to .dlls, and that's not the problem. A developer can bundle their required languages as part of the installer. A program can install java. Minecraft for example. If this is an argument over semantics of which OS handles it better, it was never the argument. But a 12 year old would more likely be capable of installing and running Minecraft on Windows than on EVERY Linux distro. -- Why? because every distribution is different. It's not unified. It's not coherent across distros. That was my argument.

[@Ralphunreal]

The market share is at a consistent 3% which is the highest ever. That is good going into 2024 as the growth will continue and more software support will come with that.

[@MiningForPies]

The market share has shot up thanks to WSL.

[@idk-sy3iu]

Market share has been at a consistent 3% which is the highest ever for the last 20 years

[@MiningForPies]

@@idk-sy3iu yes. Thanks to WSL

[@jamestillman5247]

10 more years itll be at 4 percent unless they can unify package management and get better laptop drivers.

[@Sjoerd1993]

3:10 Almost no distro forces another theme on every app Except for the most important one. Ubuntu overrides both the color stylesheet, as well as the icons on third party apps. Has lead to a bunch of headaches on the application I maintain (Graphs).

[@sixdroid]

not if you install debs.that happens with flatpak

[@slim_2280]

The problem with Wayland is on the back end X11 still being used to run it.

[@Mithferion]

This "unification" thing on several fronts (User Interface consistency, Packaging Formats and others) are usually what people argue against because of Freedom So, not seeing it soon as something that is welcomed/applied by all

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Unification doesn’t have to come at the expense of choice, we just need to have the big distros unified, anyone will still be free to run WeirdOS and use whatever they want :)

[@cameronbosch1213]

Flatpak is that tool for graphical apps. Snaps will probably either fade away, be only on Ubuntu, or be used only for CLI apps. Meanwhile, for 90% or more of graphical apps, I can't see any issues with Flatpaks.

[@LtSich]

@@TheLinuxEXP unification is in progress.... Most major distro are in fact systemd... We will see what happen with the package manager, but with immutable distro and user app installed through flatpak maybe we will see some change here too.... At least for the "end user"...

[@ArtemMelanich]

Freedom can be efficient if everyone can use something that will help interaction between groups, like common language, that's why protocols like Wayland is the way to go. Otherwise we'll be lagging behind world when everyone would still be writing their own text editors for their fancy shell when even basic stuff that Windows or Mac has for years is hard to implement in this incoherent zoo.

[@Mithferion]

@@TheLinuxEXP It depends on the level of unification. But I have to say that I'd love to have a more solid and consistent ecosystem, even if it's "boring", because that might attract more Software Developers from stablished companies

[@GorgeousGary]

I still use Windows on my main PC, but I recently started dual-booting Linux for my laptop. Only keeping Windows on there for a few other games and apps I need for work.

[@tuanht89]

I really like this video. The complexity of current Linux eco system make more harder to welcome newcomer. As a veteran Linux user, I feel disappointed as well. My Gaming PC running exclusively on Linux since 2021, but still I have to think about Mac & Windows for my daily driver, since now I don't have much time to invest into Linux to troubleshoot the problem, just like I don't have time to list-out them in this comment.

[@negirno]

I'm using Linux exclusively for eight years now. The only things I miss is the fast indexed search and the Windows 7 theme with the frosted windows.

[@nategraham4027]

Plasma and GNOME both have fast indexed search, BTW. And Plasma has theming, so I'm sure you can find something that emulates the Windows 7 look.

[@cameronbosch1213]

​@@nategraham4027 Yep, the Se7en Aero theme does it on KDE.

[@davidkachel]

The Linux Experiment... I don't think the word "Experiment" applies any longer, Nick. You have become the premier news source for Linux.

[@AGRACUTA]

its not quite there yet, BUT significant leaps in progress made and i am quite excited, keep going everyone!

[@jboi7656]

I'm on KDE and while you were talking about how good wayland support is i decided to check it out.. I have a GTX960 and am using the latest NVIDIA drivers and no, it does not work. At all. It just crashes. As much as I want wayland to succred, until slightly older hardware isn't supported i'll have to stick with x11

[@cameronbosch1213]

Honestly, if you're still using an Nvidia GTX GPU, maybe it's time to upgrade to an Nvidia RTX, AMD Radeon, or Intel Arc GPU.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

That’s why I said older cards aren’t there yet. GTX are basically abandoned by nvidia on Linux

[@heisenberg-hk6nt]

​@@cameronbosch1213not affordable in my country

[@cameronbosch1213]

@@heisenberg-hk6nt What about Intel Arc? That's pretty damn affordable relative to recent GPUs. The Arc A770 should be just fine for most gaming at 1080p and even some 1440p with XeSS or FSR use cases.

[@cameronbosch1213]

@@heisenberg-hk6nt What country are you in? India?

[@marufbepary100]

The only way for Linux to get those big proprietary apps is if Flatpaks or Snap improve a lot or WebAssembly takes off.

[@ContraVsGigi]

One thing I would like to have is a text selector in the image viewer. Any phone has that nowadays, why can't a desktop have it? It is a very, very useful thing.

[@netrix64]

There is just one big Problem for all newer Multiplayer Games. More of them are switching to kernel level anti cheat tools. EA did this for example with their most recent/"supported" Titles. So I would say the Problems just have begun. And Games like LOL or Valorant or Rainbow Six Siege or Fortnite or Call of Duty are not going Away for some time to come.

[@o00nemesis00o]

so long as there are morons willing to give kernel access for playing video games, no, they're not.

[@cameronbosch1213]

Actually, EA has sunk so far that their solution barely worked on Windows! Also, name a good game they've made since 2014. Also, Fortnite and Rainbow Six Siege use anti-cheats that COULD support Proton, but because the developers are asshats, they don't. Riot is a Chinese company. Don't trust a word they say. Goodness knows what Vanguard does when it's running...

[@liarus]

Absolutely amazing video, i recently switched to dual boot windows on nobara linux (fedora fork by Glorious eggroll, creator of proton-ge) It has been the best Linux experience i have ever had now with all the KDE improvements as well as wayland and proton. I totally agree with the issue of having 10000 different packaging formats, it's an absolute pain to have all my apps being in different formats, and some working with my distro with ease, or not, flatpaks are amazing for that, but just like you mentioned, the browser that i use, which is only available as a flatpak on linux, doesn't work with password manager extensions. Your video recaps a lot of my experience, it's way better that it was before, but everything is very much WIP but the overall usability has drastically improved

[@PSXman9]

currently it's an absolute mess with wayland getting objectively worse, mendocino CPUs are broken to a point where not even ubuntu LTS can be installed due to massive graphical corruption in the installer. one of my tumbleweed systems self destructed after enabling wayland (emergency mode crash loop, no drives detected from a live usb) external PCIe SSD has corrupted files after a week (EXT4)... it's a mess.

[@BankstonSkooma]

Tell those quims at Proton to get it together and make a Proton Drive client for Linux.

[@Wisankara]

Fingerprint reader support on Linux was abysmal on every laptop I've tried (thinkpds). It either doesn't work, or you need to manually install everything, and it may not even work then, or it works quite bad. The only distro with which I had a good fingerprint reader experience was Deepin OS, weirdly. Why can't other distros do the same? Is it that hard? It's a shame those options aren't built into the settings, so you can have everything unlocked via finger, rather than writing the password each and every time...

[@soulstenance]

5:40 *Debs, rpms* and whatever Arch uses via *pacman* can and should stay - they're fast, light, integrated and most importantly, vetted by the distro maintainers themselves. *Flatpak* is good for the odd app your distro doesn't ship or for newer versions of said apps. Under any Arch based distro, flatpaks are usually rendered obsolete and redundant since Arch ships more packages than any other distro and they are typically as up to date as flatpaks, if not more so. *Appimages,* I don't really like because it's hard to keep apps up to date individually, though this might be changing. At any rate, I don't think appimages solve any problems not already solved better by flatpaks. *Nix* package manager sounds cool and seems to be trying a new approach which is not a bad thing, but it's kinda niche and anyways most distros don't shove it in your face so it's a non-issue to me. *Snaps* can die in the deepest pit ever dug. Not only do they, like appimages, not solve any problems that flatpak hasn't already solved, but they're built around a single proprietary store unlike any other packaging format mentioned. I will never support that, and even if they were 10x faster than any other option, I would still oppose its adoption based solely on that fact. That's my thoughts on the most popular packaging formats.

[@9a3eedi]

I agree with you, except for the AppImages. To me they're basically the Linux equivalent of PortableApps... Stuff you can put on a usb stick and move them around between Linux computers. You can't really do this with flatpak or snap, and doing it with executables is tricky because they need to be fully statically linked among other things. They have their place and they're useful as an addition to all the other packaging formats

[@soulstenance]

@@9a3eedi That's fair. Good point! I rarely used portable apps even in my Windows days so I didn't consider this.

[@the_didenko]

The visual progress section completely missed the point of the lack of feasible color management. It regressed in 2023, making media production on Linux an uphill battle. Adobe will not even consider a system without color management. The excellent Darktable is crippled by the lack of color management. Not sure about video production, but assume it is in a similar sorry state for similar reasons.

[@cameronbosch1213]

That's not the reason. There's no good video editor apart from Kdenlive (which is FOSS but still behind many propietary apps) and DaVinci Resolve (which has insanely stupid limitations even in their several thousand dollar paid version. There's literally no other competitor; Vegas isn't on Linux, Final Cut Pro is Apple exclusive (to be expected given it's an Apple product), Adobe is, well, a scam, and I don't know about the others, but they often don't have Linux ports.

[@cameronbosch1213]

HDR is a thing on KDE Plasma. It's being worked on in GNOME and further work on Plasma is ongoing.

[@the_didenko]

Lack or presence of HDR capabilities is pragmatically orthogonal to color management, aka calibration.

[@Imevul]

AI integration in the OS is one of the reasons why I'm seriously considering switching away from Windows, even as a gamer. Been dual-booting Pop OS for around 2 weeks now, and even though I've been having more issues than success at this point, I'm not giving up. I refuse to upgrade to Windows 12 (or any AI-powered OS).

[@_loss_]

What's the issue? DLSS is all AI and the future according to Nvidia is AI generative instead of rendering. Do you have any more specifically concerns regarding AI? Imo you should be more concerned about privacy issues.

[@nnnik3595]

Yeah can you like actually explain it to me? What's your specific problem with AI in the system?

[@atlantic_love]

LMAO...."AI" do you even know that is? Do you REALLY believe all the AI-nonsense you've been reading? Better invest in some tin foil stock!

[@roundabout-host]

​@@_loss_It's AI, but not trying to replace something else.

[@Imevul]

I don't like having my data sent to a server somewhere to process it (not specific to AI services, but yet another reason why I'm switching from windows). Even if processed locally, I don't like that I'm supposed to trust an unpredictable black box to do the right thing. Having tested LLMs like ChatGPT, I have zero confidence in them. Most of the time, the output is wrong, but said with absolute confidence. Until corrected. You basically have to verify everything. As for the comparison with DLSS: if my daily computer use relied on 100% correct visual output, I would not use that either. Fortunately, having my computer do what I expect is not the same thing as rendering a mostly correct image, so this is pretty irrelevant. Not all AI is bad, and not for all use cases, obviously. Seems a little strawman-y to even bring that up. I just want my computer to do exactly what I tell it to. If It's possible to verify the code, even better.

[@1337Jogi]

As long as the Distro landscape is so splintered there will never be mainstream adaption. If a newcomers says "I want to try Linux" the answer cannot be "OK which distro do you like - what do you want to do with it" but it must be "Ok lets install it". And "it" must mean the main distro 90% of all people are using because it cover 98% of all usecases. The mere idea that there are many distros for many usecases just communicates strongly that no matter what distro you use it will always be a compromise. 90% of people will stop at that point. Wouldn't be surprised if in a few years ChromeOS will be by far the biggest Linux based OS and actually threatening Microsoft

[@christian80gabi]

After years watching many videos of yours, I decided this very year (on 8th of August 2023) to install a Linux distribution (OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE) on my main laptop computer. I did that because I was still asking myself (after checking a list of Distro not based on any other distro) "Why is OpenSUSE not so famous as other mainstream Distros such as Fedora, Debian, Arch... since it has been there for such a long time?". Anyway, this year has been my YEAR OF LINUX. 💻 Thank you, Nick, and to other Linux content creators.

[@warrenvanwyck2765]

Wish you'd comment on this (a huge reason I stick with Windows with three monitors): "In Linux, the ability for desktop environments (DEs) to remember window sizes and positions, similar to Microsoft Windows, can vary based on the DE you’re using. Some DEs may have built-in features or settings that allow this functionality, while others may require additional tools or scripts."

[@pogsee]

KDE has been magnificent for me on CachyOS. It's the first DE I found that really scaled nicely on my 4k 32" display. Really enjoying CachyOS itself also.

[@orkhepaj]

cachy os... omg

[@DanielAnderssson]

KDE is disgusting

[@cameronbosch1213]

​@@DanielAndersssonNo it isn't. Explain why you think is it?

[@asciblue]

Bluetooth support that doesn’t peg the volume at 100% without editing a config and manually restarting the daemon, then having to edit stuff every update would be great.

[@PlayNeth]

Wish ngreedia would at least open source the firmware for the GTX cards in the future so they wouldn't be complete ewaste

[@cameronbosch1213]

Given their greediness and their recent focus on AI, you might as well just go for a newer GPU from Nvidia, AMD, or Intel. Arc GPUs aren't that expensive anyway and most of their drawbacks are Windows specific!

[@MiningForPies]

Imagine a company wanting paying for their work. What monsters. Don’t like it? Learn to code and contribute to the open source drivers or put your money where your mouth is and fund developers who can. I’d hazard a guess you’ve never paid a penny towards any software project, you just sit there in your mum’s basement calling other people greedy while leaching of the work of others.

[@cameronbosch1213]

@@MiningForPies I sort of concur with you, but you also have to remember that most laptops with a dGPU sold since 2012 or so are using Nvidia dGPUs.

[@MiningForPies]

@@cameronbosch1213 loads available without.

[@PlayNeth]

​@@MiningForPies Bro got that early access AI brain implant from nvidia ain't no way 💀

[@adamschackart6859]

I have a handful of assorted Linux machines for build testing, and at least once a month something breaks on one of them. The last stable distro I used was Ubuntu 18.04.

[@jamestillman5247]

this is why its so important for them to advance in laptop support drivers and firmware. why is it that in the year of our lord gaben 2024 that function keys still dont work right across many laptop vendors? because linux devs do not have the right priorities. They fight and argue over themeing bullshit instead of writing laptop keyboard drivers and other important quality of life stuff.

[@RodSilva83]

Great video. Couldn't agree more. You just missed Pipewire 1.0, which is a huge milestone for Linux audio, in my opinion. It's better then Pulseaudio, for regular users, and works well as a Jack replacement, for pro audio users.

[@Anarchistcowboy]

i switched over to Linux on Linuxs birthday 9/7/2023 hopefully more people like me have so we can get more attention from developers.

[@ProteinFromTheSea]

I’ve tried loads of distros and DEs, and the one that kept me from returning to windows was arch and xfce, of all things. I guess the point is that with Linux, there’s so many possibilities, that I’m sure there’s something out there that works for everyone

[@DrivingSander1970]

Almost halfway into 2024 and video playback in the latest linux distros (Fedora 40 Gnome with proprietary Nvidia drivers) still sucks big time. I still keep a backup laptop with windows 11 ready. I would love to love Linux but it is very difficult.

[@Yaarmehearty]

Hopefully AI stays out of the Linux desktop, I finally jumped to 100% daily driving Linux rather than dual booting after Microsoft announced the heavy integration in windows 12.

[@basilcat3111]

Hopefully it will. But you can always compile without AI. That is not possible on windows.

[@bluesillybeard]

@@basilcat3111 I think AI should stay in 3rd party apps / plugins, and I'm betting that's what will actually end up happening. Most popular distros support plugins / extensions, so that's likely will it will go. Still fully integrated into the desktop, but as an extension so it's optional.

[@mattsgamingstuff5867]

Even if it comes to linux, we'll surely keep forks without it for the foreseeable future.

[@4.0.4]

What is the problem with AI? If it's local and open source, it's a great thing.

[@mpx41]

​@@4.0.4 The problem is in its current form it's a grift, just like crypto or nfts. It's not really intelligence, just a bunch of neural networks trained on questionable data. And while ML has its applications, it's always highly specialized tools with a million caveats attached to them; not some ultimate personal assistant ready-to-use by anybody. Also, I don't understand what's the point of replacing fuzzy search with "fuzzy search but biased and with more bugs".

[@shuetomtqasaab]

I just want to say, that now I'm finally contributing to the Linux market share with my recently build machine with Cinnamon-flavored Debian 12. I'm really excited to see the development of Linux in 2024

[@MegaManNeo]

Feels like the biggest burden in all this right now is distros and devs still sticking to older package formats for non-elemental software like Firefox, as well as GNOME of all DE's being super nitpicky about standards. Even for Linux standards can be a good thing, distros no longer having to maintain userspace software on their own frees up a ton of resources and saves on server capacities for distribution too. For 2024 I want Valve to make their Quest SteamLink tool work with Linux too as well as InputLeap actually finally working as its Barrier for Wayland, so I can switch too without headaches.

[@jbritain]

Unless Valve release a steam deck capable of running VR and a headset that's practical to use with it, I doubt they have much incentive to port it.

[@atlantic_love]

The issue isn't package formats. It's continued abandoning and forking distros. I don't know why so many Linux fanbois think that coming out with a new package format is going to change anything. The problem is your OS!

[@MegaManNeo]

@@atlantic_love Hey, don't be a weirdo watching a video on a subject you dislike anyway and then insult others, I use Windows and Android too, plus I don't mind if people use Apple products. The redistribution thing is an issue though and certainly all these minor hobby distros won't help either but having a platform like Flathub and additionally AppImages at least can minimize the urge by some to come up with their own variations.

[@cameronbosch1213]

@atlantic_love Some things _do_ need to be forked, like with XFree86 and OpenOffice, because there literally is no other option.

[@bionic_batman]

@@atlantic_love Because proper unified package format is all you really need to be able to run your apps on every linux distro.

[@EHKvlogs]

Warning: RANT I installed debian xfce on my old machine yesterday and i still have not figured out how to set the time, and without proper time i can not use the internet, update the system or install anything. also my sources.list was empty after install, i had to manually type it. BTW xubuntu's xfce is much better experience than the default xfce, which is just trash.

[@iWisp360]

As time passes i stick more and more to the linux desktop to the point using windows is a pain for me, because the ease of installing apps through the store is one of the best ways to get things done fastly, and the gnome is so beautiful and fast.

[@atlantic_love]

LOL, keep trying.

[@Azertyyys]

Trying to gaslight yourself into thinking linux is better than windows is crazy

[@atlantic_love]

@@AzertyyysWhat these clowns do is copy and paste the same garbage from other comments from other videos and off reddit and the like. They know that the garbage they're spewing is just that ..... garbage, but hey, likes! Linux is a broken community of lonely, unsocial nerds, with a broken ecosystem and broken user experience. Their only lot in life is to tinker their way to a working desktop :D

[@cameronbosch1213]

​@@AzertyyysTrying to gaslight that Microsoft doesn't spy on you and macOS isn't going to turn into iOS is much more crazy.

[@Felix-ve9hs]

6:00 Basically the whole Linux experience in a nutshell, no one wants to compromise, everyone keeps reinventing the wheel ...

[@isrbillmeyer]

Kubuntu 23.10 Kernel 6.5 Hardly ever go to Wayland session atm because Wayland is sluggish compared to X11. Can see some interesting improvements with different refresh rate and scaling for different screens connected etc in Wayland - but the sluggish and jerky cursor movement is a deal breaker atm.

[@MrQuay03]

Nvidia card?

[@isrbillmeyer]

@@MrQuay03 Yip. But was same with the Intel graphics.

[@MrQuay03]

@@isrbillmeyer i had good experience with AMD card. Nvidia is still a mess with KDE

[@studybuddy7060]

wow, I have almost the opposite experience. If I don't use my NVIDIA card (which most of the time I don't), Wayland is much smoother. Also no screen tearing. I don't why it's the opposite for you.

[@MrQuay03]

@@studybuddy7060 could it be that you are using RTX card? I'm using GTX 1060 on desktop and GTX 1650 on laptop. Both have screen tear issue and poor performance

[@TheGodzilla2201]

I think during installation the distro should give the user the choice of which package manager, desktop managers, and store package managers. Once this is done they can't install other package and desktop managers. Also explain each package manager and desktop manager is and what it does. also give a quick lesson on the terminal at start for the new user.

[@WaterShowsProd]

I was recently saying to a friend of mine as annoying as supidphones are with constantly bugging and nagging you with requests and "advice" and interrupting you with stuff that's pointless, once they have built-in A.I. they are going to be sledgehammer-to-the-screen level of annoying. I can only imagine how drop-a-nuclear-bomb-on-Redmond annoying Windows will be with A.I. It will make the paperclip look like your best friend.

[@cavvieira]

As for finding things, it's not the same, but Zeitgeist enabled launchers such as Synapse and Gnome Do had an uncanny ability of finding what you were thinking about. They became abandonware, but newer launchers offer plenty of power too. Whatever happened to Zeitgeist anyway?

[@lua-nya]

Someone could make a video bout Zeitgeist. Maybe Brodie? Doesn't feel like a Nick topic.

[@ReidvinK]

i still remember banshee fondly, it was buggy, had random stutters, and couldn't handle massive libraries well. but it was perfect for those lazy sundays when you wanted to lose yourself in the music.

[@cavvieira]

@@lua-nya Yeah, Nick is great at getting you pumped about what's new. Zeitgeist is bordering on nostalgia. Which sucks, because I don't know of anything that took it's place, and it's all about things of today. It's personal data mining with privacy by default. Do you know of any project doing something like it did?

[@VEKTOR_87]

2024 and 2025 will be a big year for Linux as windows 10 is reaching EOL and many users don't want to upgrade their systems and just want to browse the web and do some word processing I hope by Nov 2025 all Wayland issues and other issues get fixed Wine / Proton will be also much better thus making Linux an option for new users to try

[@johncalla2151]

I've been hearing this cope for 20 years. People said this about the Windows 7 to 8 transition.

[@orkhepaj]

sure :D this mantra was said each year , good luck reaching 3% userbase in 2025 mate :P people are smarter than to waste their time on configuring/fixing linux nonstop

[@michaelmonstar4276]

@@johncalla2151 It's not the same story. The state of both Linux and Windows are much better and worse respectively today. - It's not "cope", "bruh", it's just the way it is. People will either put up with what Microsoft hands them, or they'll look for better alternatives. And at this point, what Microsoft offers might be bad enough to push many users away. - Worse features and hardware-support?... Data-collection and ads??... Paying for extended support???... Yea, no. Not for many people. - I'm not saying an overnight shift to Linux for everyone. I'm saying a gradual shift for a significant amount of Windows-users as they become aware of how viable a Linux-distro is without a hassle is these days.

[@michaelmonstar4276]

@@orkhepaj Your comment shows that you know nothing about different Linux-distros. - Today, you can easily just recommend ones like Pop!, Mint, or Zorin, and most Windows and Mac users could just use it without getting lost. - Configuring WHAT??... Windows is much more of a hassle in some ways. It's a very stubborn operating-system that has terrible design in terms of finding settings. They just seem to hide stuff and lock things away. - Some Linux-distros, like the ones I mentioned, were designed to be user-friendly. That's what it's for, to customize to what the users want, not what one singular company wants.

[@jamestillman5247]

most users will just keep using windows 10 past the expiration date because they are clueless on how to install linux or what that means.

[@Nope-iw7fm]

Could you make a video on what Wayland is and why it is replacing x11? I am out of the loop. Thanks for the videos!

[@Kxshou]

He actually has! It's a bit old now but it should still suffice. "WAYLAND: what is it, and is it ready for daily use?" is the video title.

I wonder why there's no general interest for using an intermediate binary format to ship applications. eg. WASM, which can be compiled during install to actual machine code. (WASI also seems to fit nicely into the containerized abstract system API direction). Now that ARM is starting to pop up in desktop systems and also RISC-V is on the horizon, it would make more sense than ever.

[@FOREST10PL]

Packaging is not a problem of actually running the apps as that's the easy part. The hard part is getting all the files in the right places, setting up app configs for all the different distributions etc. Sadly, there's no standard for that and flatpak/appimage/snap were made to address that. Of course, they made 3 standards (and ubuntu made the worst by a long shot) so...

[@qualia_]

Friendly reminder: When you try doing something slightly non standard, wayland halts and catches fire.

[@miinyoo]

I am just now playing with Linux and I'm starting with Arch because it's hard. It does what I want it to do. It pulls no punches, you can actually break things. It is well well documented for things I would never need. Simplicity is key. Features are fantastic but they are layers over a predictable and well managed system that day to day application using shouldn't need to interact with. Finally. I learn better when I break stuff. Training wheels would make it nicer but if you read a little and don't assume things, training wheels aren't necessary. Two mirrored drives. One good Arch. One experimental. When I make system changes and I fuck up beyond snapshot's ability to cure, clone back and try again. Don't daily Linux until you have fucked up several times. Start slow. Always have a clone of stable to return to previous regardless of snapshots (Edit: I do this with Windows regularly and there's hardly a shapshot there). Even Arch isn't all that intimidating if you read their stuff and move to more complex interactions step by step. Never all at once unless you already know what you're doing.

[@michaelmonstar4276]

"I'm starting with Arch because it's hard." - I can tell you've spent time on Linux-forums... You've clearly been influenced by the pretentious talk from the elitists. You know what I use?... Pop!_OS, cause it's simple and easy to use. - That said, I will probably move to a distro that has some more fleshed-out options next year, but I'm not gonna "use a distro because it's hard". - Hey, maybe you want to punish yourself or teach yourself programming or something. - I don't, I just want to use an operating-system that just does things out-of-the-box and preferably just as well or better than Windows. - There's no need to "fuck up" or "start slow". That's such nonsense. There are literally entire companies that make Linux-distros to just install and use. Stop pretending that it all needs to be like a minefield of risks and a whole learning-experience. It's not the case.

[@CrisR82]

I try to check out Linux Mint at least once per year for a few weeks...and honestly, I just don't see Linux becoming an OS for the everyday user for at least 5-10 years more. CAN it do the job? - yes it can. Does it run on any common PC you can find? - yes...but the UI and the whole app distribution - literally nobody can look at the current state and be like "yeah, this is on-par with Windows, I'll start recommending it to my little-to-non-tech-savvy friends!". This might sound disrespectful (not my intention), but I'm really starting to believe the only everyday-user-Linux will endup being SteamOS (if that ever releases stand-alone). I know how Linux is all about openness, having options for everything and the love and passion people put in their work on something THIS big and important...but it's very clear that there is little to no coordination happening in the grand scheme of things so unless someone big like Valve comes in and puts the work into solving these quickly, it will either never happen or drag on for many many years.

[@DavidAlsh]

I've been learning GTK4+Libadwaita for Rust and am interested in contributing to developing some desktop applications. The development experience isn't the best, probably because gtk4-rs is a C library coerced into Rust. While I am willing to push through the oddities, from an adoption standpoint, it would be wise to improve the development experience so more people feel encouraged to make applications for Gnome.

[@Psychx_]

How does PopOS solve this? Does it also use gtk4-rs for its Cosmic desktop? If not, then looking into their tooling and approach may be beneficial.

[@DavidAlsh]

@@Psychx_ I actually did look into this. They have a framework based on a UI toolkit called iced. If you've used React+Redux on the Web it's very similar. I personally find it too opinionated and I don't like the MVU architecture so it wasn't for me. Gtk is very very similar to building an interface with vanilla JavaScript - however it has a lot of gotyas inherited from it's C roots (like, you have to have 2 different async runtimes to do anything). It's going in the right direction though so I can imagine if gtk5 was written with rust consumers in mind - it would be a very nice UI toolkit to use

[@glmchn]

Linux Mint 21 Cinnamon as primary system for >6 months now and it still manage to blow me away some days when I find a great attention to detail hide somewhere. What started as an experiment is now a f*cking needed breath of fresh air when I use my laptop compare to the Windows system I managed at work during the day.

[@Beryesa.]

How linux desktop will handle AI is probably the only safe way out for privacy.

[@kolkoki]

"New games will support Linux" sadly this doesn't seems to be true. "The finals" uses EAC just to annoy Linux user as the support is not enabled but they can't ban cheaters somehow.

[@jorge86rodriguez]

I think linux is excellent if you are at least an intermediate user, you do not need to be super advance to be able to use or troubleshoot in linux just follow youtube guides and wikis like this channel. But for 0 tech people is still a struggle, I tried to migrate my dad pc to linux but it was too hard for him :p As a somewhat competent computer guy I am in love with linux (fedora user) and new technologies like flatpak and more mature ones like wine and proton. I am careful optimistic for the future of linux with products like the steam deck that targets non tech people because I do not see them installing linux from scratch, they need something ready to use.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

I think for 0 knowledge people, Linux is the best choice OF it comes preinstalled

[@jorge86rodriguez]

@@TheLinuxEXP thanks for the reply and yes you are right, the steam deck is prof of what you said

[@iWisp360]

​​​@@TheLinuxEXPGnome based Linux Distros like debian are the best choice for the beginner on computers, they are more intuitive than windows

[@wombatdk]

@@TheLinuxEXP ...until they want to install some Windows software or game. Then the zero knowledge will kick their ass so hard they'll have their last meal come up again.

[@sergeykish]

​@@wombatdk no such issue on Nintendo or Sony consoles, Android, macOS, iOS.

[@benjy288]

Running on wayland still has many issues to sort out, so fedora dropping it seems very bizarre, I tried it recently with the latest kde and hardware accelerated video playback didn't work in chromium, scrolling in chromium wasn't very smooth, scrolling through youtube with a video playing in mpv in the bottom corner of the screen would result in a random unresponsive browser until you focused your mouse back on mpv, hardware accelerated video playback in librewolf resulted in spiky cpu usage, window shading still doesn't work in kwin, window position settings in mpv don't work either, also hardware acceleration doesn't work well in mpv, I can play back a 4k video with the high quality gpu profile setting in mpv on x11 and only use about 2% of the cpu, but on wayland the same video is stuttering, so I went back to lxqt with kwin on x11, where everything just works.

[@-Engineering01-]

I switched to windows 11. Through WSL now I can run and do all of my work on Windows. No more distro hopping bullshit, buggy ecosystem of desktop environments, x11 vs Wayland hell. I'm so much happy now and I value my time more. Now I use Linux on VM, if wsl2 doesn't work.

[@garyoneil9791]

Every machine I have tried to use Linux on since 1999 has had some kind of issue with graphics driver problem. Intel, nVidia or AMD - at some point I break the config and end up having to reinstall the OS to fix. Broke one last night - holo ISO on and AMD GPU laptop. Last month it was PopOS on an Intel iGPU laptop.

[@Jupiter__001_]

The same happened to me a few weeks ago with an Nvidia laptop (hybrid graphics) running Nobara (which is Fedora with a bunch of QoL changes and Nvidia drivers out of the box). Went from running perfectly to booting to black screen with blinking cursor. It must have been some kind of error with hybrid graphics support, since I was able to boot by disabling the integrated GPU (thank goodness my laptop has a hardware multiplexer rather than relying purely on software hybrid graphics). I switched to NixOS because its goals of reproducibility and declarative configuration (as opposed to imperative configuration, i.e. issuing commands) will hopefully ensure that it will never randomly break again. Hasn't broken thus far, and if it did I could just roll back to the previous version from the boot menu. It has a big learning curve coming from being other Linux distros, and even more if one is unfamiliar with Linux/Unix altogether. Based on the anecdotes of others, I think the sweet spot in terms of learning-curve is an intermediate Linux user, who is still used to having to learn new things about the OS and look things up, but is experienced enough to have an idea of what to look up (incidentally this is the category I fell under). Basically, what I think causes random breakages is that all computer systems gradually accrete additional state information, i.e. the cruft that makes an old installation of an OS that has been through many updates feel worse than a fresh reinstall configured to a supposedly identical configuration. Updates break things, and they introduce unknowns and leave behind artifacts and oddities. The idea of a declarative configuration is that computers shouldn't be like that, and instead should just do what they did at first without complaints. But yeah, I always ran into random breakages running more mainstream Linux distros. (I also ran into issues with Windows randomly turning on my computer at 3am, so it's not just a Linux thing for me.) Maybe running something more custom, like Arch or Nix, would avoid some of these issues? I never had issues on Arch either, although that was a few years ago now on my old laptop. The situation might be worse there now, and Arch also has a poor reputation regarding stability. I would advise some kind of system roll-back programme in addition to the usual backing-up of the user's files.

[@renzo532]

I installed Linux yesterday. Then I installed Steam. Then its stuck at "loadind user data". I tried a flatpak and .deb version. As a result I returned to windows😂

[@cameronbosch1213]

Were you connected to the internet?

[@cameronbosch1213]

What distro were you on?

[@renzo532]

@@cameronbosch1213 it was Zorin os. And sure, I was connected to internet

[@williedells]

I've tried a lot of distros, but I keep coming back to and finally settled on Fedora Cinnamon Spin.

[@ShadowTheLight]

im hoping Linux becomes completely usable for gaming soon, it seems really nice but for now Windows is all that many developers of game media care about

[@marcelorauber_]

The situation won't improve if multiplayer game developers decide not to support Linux. The Finals has just been released and the game would work fine if we weren't kicked by easy anti cheat.

[@ShadowTheLight]

@@marcelorauber_ yeah i was just having a convo with my friend about this, anti cheat has gotten so aggressive and often is so scared of linux they just dont let you use it and it sucks. like i was saying i wish devs would care more about Linux as they only seem to care about Windows but i worry that wont change because they probably dont see it as where the money is

[@The8BitPianist]

@@ShadowTheLight Since modern dev cycles are something like 5 years+, it'll probably take some time for the populatirty of the steam deck to affet game releases

[@ShadowTheLight]

@@The8BitPianist oh i didnt think about the steam deck, that could definitely help prove linux as an os system to be next to windows for sure. though sadly it will not help with vr support

[@nadtz]

@@ShadowTheLight I know it doesn't cover the whole market but Linux and MacOS are are both tiny percentages of their user base according to Steam survey data. Need more gamers on Linux for it to matter enough for dev's to develop for it. Valve and SteamOS might help with that but SteamOS isn't really meant as a desktop Linux and is more specific in it's hardware support so it's kind of a one step forward 2 steps back kind of thing I guess.

[@musicalneptunian]

Webcams are still a big problem on Linux; I cannot get my logitech streamcam to work.

[@JHSaxa]

Ii had this issue on Ubuntu, too, until I installed Zoom and then presto, usb Webcam works everywhere. No idea why.

[@nonyabusiness-f9e]

app images are the way. fuck ai integration.

[@cameronbosch1213]

I would agree, but using Fuse 2 in 2024 when even upstream Fuse has been deprecated is sus.

[@Snufflegrunt]

Primarily a Windows user here. Every time I try to switch my main over to Linux I return to Windows saying “it’s closer to what I need, but it’s not there yet.” I’ve been doing that every few years since the mid 2000s. However, Kubuntu has been suitable for my Thinkpads (the only laptop brand I ever consider) for 5-6 years now, which is mainly just a browsing, word processing and streaming machine. Content creation and gaming though? Nah, not yet, and probably not for another decade. The main problem that Linux has is, as you say, fragmentation, but there’s also a lack of professionalism which is rarely talked about.

[@RipCityBassWorks]

Hopefully achieving feature parity between Flatpak and distro specific apps is the highest development priority of 2024. I definitely think Flatpak is the most promising app distribution option.

[@rbjolly]

For the sake of privacy, I can live without AI on the desktop, though I can see how practical it is when integrated into imaging apps, etc..

[@FlameSoulis]

Currently, my only driver issue right now are the Intel webcams used in All-In-One laptops like the Dell 5290 and Microsoft Surfaces. If support for them was added somehow, I'd have zero issues. Otherwise, WiFi and Bluetooth usually work fine.

[@sandwicheems]

The soul of Linux is caos, not consistency.

[@igorek_belarus7552]

If Linux had a stable solution for running Adobe programs - I would immediately switch to Linux

[@lua-nya]

That's been an issue with Adobe for quite a while. They seem to want to push people to their web suite.

[@fuzzywzhe]

It's Adobe at fault. Adobe is likely being paid off NOT to port to Linux. Quickbooks CERTAINLY is.

[@reuseful2839]

i really really really hope I can use the KDE filepicker as soon as possible

[@doveofdestiny]

Honestly, compared to the other corporate malware that are called "operating systems" Linux is incredible, sure it has its flaws - but at least you get something that the devs are put hard earned time into, instead of companies trying to ruin it by shoving useless rubbish down your throat.

[@peterschmidt9942]

Fractional scaling is actually working now on Wayland? I'll be interesting in seeing that when I get home and connect to an external monitor

[@littleharry7977]

Yea currently I’m gonna use windows until like collage because I never know when my school is gonna change to a software Linux doesn’t support or you could say software that companies don’t want Linux to support

[@ordinaryhuman5645]

I dabbled with Linux a bit in college for one of my CS classes long ago and it was sufficient for general college stuff at the time. That was over a decade ago though. Ended up going back to Windows when I finished that class until this year because gaming wasn't feasible back then like it is now.

[@Ironpants57]

What software do you use that you'll need Windows? Other than games and an office suite?

[@cameronbosch1213]

That's their problem. An OS should be a tool to get work done. If it gets the job done, why should they care if was done on Linux or Windows?

[@littleharry7977]

@@Ironpants57I generally use stuff like PowerPoint Word and I use a Wacom product which Wacom drivers are hard to get for people like me with little terminal experience

[@Ironpants57]

@@cameronbosch1213 Some people are too worked up with X software and cannot handle change. Linux handles 90% computer use cases, video content/movies/some games/etc.. However certain software is better than others.. Media software like 3D modeling/Texturing, Video editing, and Animation is very crucial to certain workflows. It's a crutch but also a kryptonite for most. Like or hate it, most wish there was an easier way and not to worry.

[@鬼塚アレクセイ]

If apps from windows will somehow install and run smoothly on linux, that on itself would be a huge gamechanger, because actually there is no OS users. People are app users.

[@cameronbosch1213]

There's Bottles. Many apps can be gotten working with a bit of tweaking with Wine and Bottles. I got an Electron "Windows and macOS" app running by just running it via a Wine Bottle. And it works apart from some odd UI issues; it doesn't look right, but functionally, it works as intended.

[@marlonese]

If I had to summarize the current state of desktop Linux in a single sentence it'd probably be this: We still have a long way to go but we already came so far.

[@claranymark]

The ONE thing keeping me crawling back to windows is the Adobe apps (especially Substance 3D Painter), I have to use Adobe programs for school and I have tried to use alternatives but they all miss features I need or have different keyboard shortcuts so I would have to relearn EVERYTHING.

[@ariqahmer]

I've started development work and am still using Windows. But the moment I see the disk space it consumes and the bloatware that is painfully hard to get rid of, I have set my mind to switch to Linux for development. I've used Linux before and I still love it. The only reason for using Windows is because of work specific software. But I decided it's better to run a Windows VM on my Linux (should the need arise) than using WSL on Windows

[@zepar6076]

Flatpak takes a lot of space as well

[@Azertyyys]

Yess nonexistent bloatware that every REAL! linux user talks about

[@DarkMikaruX]

I've been saying this for years and it looks like it's still true. Linux will never be ready for PRIME TIME! And it's unfortunate because we need a free alternative to Windows / Mac. To be clear, by Prime Time I mean I can install Linux on any family PC and not have to worry about said family member not being able to operate the computer properly. Zero chance my parents now would want to even try worrying about Install Packs and compatibility issues. I'm still happy to see such great progress and promise. My fear is that I'll never really be able to recommend Linux as a free option to most of my friends, family or clients. It's still not there yet.

[@Gatsu563]

Honestly, it depends on the usage. I installed a dual boot on my father's old 7 years old laptop because he was complaining his computer was slower and slower. My father is 67 yo and he was not a fan of the idea at first. He still had that image of Linux from 20 years ago, where you have to use the terminal every time you want to do something. He doesn't do much with his computer : surf the web, watch videos, save his phone's photos on an external drive, print some pdf documents. He doesn't use Windows at all anymore. The printer just works now contrary to the battle it was on windows. The computer is notably more responsive, faster to start the os and start the web browser and he was able to display his photos and videos on his tv with no help. Only problem he had so far was to update his GPS, I had to add executable right to the file he downloaded. And in that case he probably would have succeeded on his own on windows.

[@DarkMikaruX]

@@Gatsu563 My dad will be 71 this year and he sounds a lot like your dad. Reluctant at first with new tech things but seems to pick it up quickly. I'm happy to hear that your dad has made that transition and is happy with it. Ultimately, that's the goal. But your last statement about the GPS is exactly what I'm talking about. There WILL be a time they buy something and bring it home to use and find out it doesn't work out of the box like it would for Windows. Weather it be your example of a portable GPS, or some adapter, etc. I'd want people I recommend Linux to to have ZERO issues like that. And yes, Linux has come a long way I just don't think it's ready for me to trust it to recommend to people yet. Dual Booting.. it's been a long long time since I've done that. Nowadays I just run Ubuntu (insert distro here) in a VM to see how it runs. With regards to speeding up a lower spec system I've also struck out on that front too. There are still systems not even Linux can save. I would have just purchased an SSD ( 500GB SSDs are $35) clean installed Windows 10 / 11, optimize the settings and called it a day. Finally, now that I have a reliable source for 10 dollar Windows Pro keys I just haven't looked back to Linux. But I'll def keep an eye on it as I'm rooting for it.