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Posted by todsacerdoti 6 days ago

2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop(xeiaso.net)
832 points | 637 commentspage 4
sandreas 6 days ago|
Long time Linux Desktop user here. I really think Linux is a great choice as a Desktop in days of liquid glass and webviews. There are a lot of choices to make, but in the end it is working out really well (at least for me). KDE and the new COSMIC desktop environment with tiling support are tempting, but for now I keep using GNOME until I have more time to check them out.

The things I personally had problems with is BTRFS and printers. BTRFS was completely irrecoverable after a system crash, full story see here [1]. Since I've read a lot of these horror stories while doing some research after the crash, I would encourage everyone using it to be careful and backup your system on a daily basis. I switched to ZFS with ZFSBootMenu[2] and never looked back.

Printer-wise, I have a Canon network printer / scanner which seems to use a strange proprietary protocol. On Fedora everything worked fine while on Arch I did not find a way to get this thing working (I tried hard with different options like driverless, gutenprint, cupsd etc.) - printing also seems to be a bit of a security nightmare when changing firewall settings is mandatory.

Everything else is working absolutely stunning.

1: https://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=13013

2: https://github.com/sandreas/zarch

E39M5S62 5 days ago||
Quick note on #2 - there aren't really any issues with storing your encryption root passphrase in a file. If the file is owned by root, with no read permissions for any account, only root can access it. Since it's stored on an encrypted dataset, and your initramfs is as well, it's unreadable when the machine is off. Lastly, if anybody _does_ have a root shell on your machine, they can change the encryption passphrase without needing to know the current value.

In short, I'm not sure there are any real issues with having it on disk but unreadable by anybody but root.

jama211 5 days ago|||
In general I agree with you but there is one difference - a sneaky user with physical access can read it and _not_ change it, vs changing it. The latter is more detectable. But this is minor.
E39M5S62 5 days ago||
Yeah. Unfortunately, ZFS encryption is missing a few creature comforts of something like LUKS. I've stuck with native OpenZFS mechanisms, though, to keep the complexity sprawl to a minimum.
sandreas 5 days ago|||
Absolutely - I know that but thanks for pointing that out again. There is no real "use case" for NOT storing the key into a root owned file. However, as I don't do it for myself there is no way of accidentally deleting the file, copying it quickly from my system to another drive when I accidentally left a root shell open and went to the restrooms (that never happens;) and the one single place I store the key (my head) is pretty much unreadable for everyone except me (at least for now :-) Being paranoid doesn't mean they are not after you :p

Since I reboot my notebook only about once in a month it is no real hassle to enter the key twice 12 times a year :-)

theandrewbailey 5 days ago||
I've run BTRFS on my server (and external drive backups) for over 10 years without issues. I would use BTRFS on my main rig, but Steam (or perhaps Proton in particular) doesn't like it, so Ext4 there.
sylens 5 days ago||
I’m running BTRFS now on a Cachy install and Steam/Proton seems fine - when did you last try?
theandrewbailey 5 days ago||
About a year ago. Games simply refused to run, and some cursory searching suggested it was because my filesystems were BTRFS and advised using EXT4 instead. That worked for me.
dbcooper 6 days ago||
https://x.com/EnterpriseCPU/status/1972103355012124891?s=20
cheema33 5 days ago|
I am not sure why people do this. Why post a link without providing any explanation of what the link is. It is quite annoying. No, I am not going to click the link to find out.
ecommerceguy 6 days ago||
I'll toss in my 2 cents: 1. people that have no business whatsoever now know what linux is ie sales dawgs that only touch a computer for the occasional spreadsheet. 2. 70 year old man fed up with windows, moved to linux. it looks great, its fast and responsive let's make this happen.
gethly 6 days ago||
It will take few more years before people start abandoning W10 due to security concerns(somehow "hackers" always find some insane backdoors and bugs in old windows, it must be a pure coincidence), hardware upgrade or just need to reinstall. But indeed, it looks like Linux is finally taking over. I'd say that beside Microsoft being so bad at their job, it's Valve and gaming on Linux in general. It's actually doable. What a miracle!
prhn 6 days ago||
I only really ever play one game, so that's not a blocker for me.

I would have switched by now but film and audio production software, including VSTs, don't seem to be greatly supported on Linux. I'd love to hear from someone if you are successfully doing this.

Normal_gaussian 6 days ago||
> I only really ever play one game, so that's not a blocker for me.

I play loads of games; its mainly AAA multiplayers that aren't able to run on linux due to kernel anti-cheat - nearly everything else runs well with minimal effort using proton via steam (either installed via steam or imported as a non-steam game).

einr 5 days ago|||
Music production is indeed still a blocker. I used to use Windows for that; I am now on macOS for work and music (much better than Windows in every way! I use an old trashcan Mac Pro with Monterey for my studio computer) and Debian for my personal machines.
newsoftheday 6 days ago||
I'd say about less than .00000001 percent of the world is in the same use case as you.
polyterative 5 days ago||
Given the current situation regarding the hardware getting more pricey, I was so fed up with the inconsistencies, the constant micro lagging frame rate drops that I finally bit the bullet on a Mac studio a couple of weeks ago. This happened after 17 years of being a Windows user and having built more than 20 machines unfortunately Linux does not have a lot commercial software that I needed
SamDc73 6 days ago||
> then just shat all over them with start menus made with React Native, control-alt-delete menus that are actually just webviews, and forcing Copilot down everyone's throats

Thank god I've been using Linux long enough to not experience any of that.

At my job in a large non-tech company, almost everyone uses Windows (except for the dev team) purely because of Microsoft Office. As long as that thing exists, they can do all the dumb things they want and still dominate.

torginus 5 days ago|
Ironically, MS Office is one of the best working Microsoft software on Linux, through Office 365. It works so well, that on my Windows work computer, I worked for months editing Word docs and Excel sheets every now and then, without realizing I didn't have Ms Office installed.
kgwxd 5 days ago||
The funny thing is, MS office apps looks less out-of-place on Linux because most apps are already different. On Windows 11, it looks like the forgotten step-child of Windows 8.
hifikuno 6 days ago||
Maybe someone here knows a solution. The ONLY thing keeping me on windows is that my employer uses F5/Big IP edge clients. I cannot find a Linux client that can also handle Web SSO. Does anyone have any Linux experience with this?
bradley13 5 days ago||
I'm no expert here, but my employer uses no less that three different SSO services (don't ask).., and all of them work under Linux.

Web-based really ought to work. Maybe your admins are being weird, and checking the user agent? Try using a plug-in to change your user-agent to Windows

mixmastamyk 6 days ago||
I did fight with that a few years ago. Memory is that you can get through some steps running Windows in a VM to get thru MFA checks, and then close it later.
temp0826 6 days ago||
Welcome...1998 was my year of the Linux desktop. Valve seems to have been dredging all of the "maybe"s over the last few years on a few different fronts. Big ups to them (not that they don't get enough praise...still!)
8bitsrule 6 days ago|
Considering how the load at Linux Mint's forums has recently increased to the point that some of it is being re-directed to gitHummed (a minute ago there were "3362 users online :: 35 registered, 3 hidden and 3324 guests" >10 secs to respond, needed to login), it appears that distro at least is seeing a lot of newcomers.
xena 6 days ago|
Those 3324 guests are all AI scrapers sadly.
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